Well, Hillary Clinton is having a bad year so far. She poured tons of money into Iowa, only to see the vaunted Clinton machine get demolished. She couldn't even pull out second place despite having every possible material advantage at her disposal.
Her idea of retooling? Using Republican talking points and exploiting terrorism concerns.
Clinton's Politics of Fear detailed below.
Bill Clinton gave us a sneak preview of this tactic about a week ago:
"There is a better than a 50 percent chance that sometime in the first year or 18 months of the next presidency something will happen that is not being discussed in this campaign. President Bush never talked about Osama Bin Laden and didn't foresee Hurricane Katrina. And if you're not ready for that then everything else you do can be undermined. You need a president that you trust to deal with something that we will not discuss in this campaign....
"How we meet those challenges will determine whether our grandchildren will even be here fifty years from now at a meeting like this listening to the next generation's presidential candidates," Clinton told several hundred voters in Plymouth. He did not elaborate on what he meant by the prospect of the audience's grandchildren not being there in 50 years.
Senator Clinton herself has on prior occasions crassly used terrorism as a political tool:
"It's a horrible prospect to ask yourself, 'What if? What if?' " Clinton, a New York Democrat, told a house party in Concord, according to the New York Post and The Associated Press and confirmed by her campaign.
"But, if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world."
Clinton added that if such a scenario occurred, she is the best Democratic presidential candidate "to deal with that."
Clinton was in the crucial early voting state Thursday to unveil her health care plan.
A Clinton spokesman, Isaac Baker, told CNN "Sen. Clinton was making clear that she has the strength and experience to keep the country safe."
Chris Dodd was kind when he called it 'tasteless.' 'Creepy and totalitarian' seems to fit better.
Well, now that Clinton was soundly rejected by voters and overwhelmingly repudiated by the next generation of voters, what is she falling back on?
Apparently she's going to draw 'sharper contrasts' with Barack Obama.
Boy howdy, that's a euphemism.
One such contrast is going National Rifle Association on him:
That suggests the next round of Clinton ads will go beyond the previous gentle references to Obama's lack of experience and begin to look at, for instance, inconsistency in his voting record. They are looking at issues like gun control, where he previously took a harder stand that may not play well with gun-loving voters in New Hampshire,
First, this is fairly, um, disgusting since it's about as rightwing as one can get.
Second, more than mildly hypocritical. Assault Weapons Ban anyone?
But that's was just the beginning. Apparently, she's going to go with 'a verb, a noun, and 9/11.'
Clinton usually only talks about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks when she speaks of her work helping Ground Zero workers cope with medical problems.
But in an airport hangar this morning, she said: "We have people who are plotting against us right now, getting ready to repeat the atrocity of Sept 11. We know it, I see the intelligence reports."
She also said, "I don’t think there has ever been a more important decision for the citizens of New Hampshire."
Isn't that just lovely. Dick Cheney from 2004:
It is a type of election strategy most often adopted by incumbent candidates. In President Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, Dick Cheney invoked a particularly bold form of it, warning of the consequences of a John Kerry election for the nation's security against terrorism: "If we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again -- that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States."
If you want change, don't let this crowd back into the White House. The Man from Hope has turned into the Machine of Fear.
UPDATE: Hilliani does it again--this time attacking Obama for being
soft on crime because he opposed mandatory minimum sentences. Begins about :50 seconds into the video.