The
NY Observer has a story about a possible meeting of the minds between Senator Hillary Clinton & Rupert Murdoch. If this courting were true, it would be similar to Tony Blair getting Murdoch's British publications to endorse Labour back in 1997...
...the specter of an alliance between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Murdoch--two of the most powerful and guarded figures in the world--is beginning to whet the appetites of the chattering classes.
At the moment, the two speak of each other (through surrogates) in notably similar terms: "Senator Clinton respects him and thinks he is smart and effective," said a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Philippe Reines. "Rupert has respect for her political skills and for the hard work that she's done as a Senator," said an executive vice president at News Corp., Gary Ginsberg.
Other evidence is still a bit lean. Lunch has been taken at News Corp.'s midtown headquarters, friendly noises have emanated from the New York Post's editorial page, and Mr. Murdoch has retained a key advisor to Mrs. Clinton, Howard Wolfson...
I still can't see Fox News giving Hillary favorable coverage. So why would Murdoch support a Hillary presidency?
...Mr. Murdoch, too, has surprised his friends before. Alienated from John Major, Britain's then Prime Minister, in 1997, he directed his Thatcherite British tabloid, The Sun, into an energetic campaign for the post-Hayman Island Mr. Blair. The paper helped deal the British Conservative Party a blow from which it has not yet recovered.
Some long-term observers of Mr. Murdoch see a logic to his flirtation with Mrs. Clinton.
"It makes perfect sense," said Nicholas Wapshott, the long-time New York bureau chief for Mr. Murdoch's Times of London, of the notion of an alliance between the two. "Although Rupert is widely assumed to be an ideological creature solely of the right, the fact is that he's a businessman before he is an ideologist, and he likes to be with a winner."