Why aren't we stating the obvious here: this whole "bitter-gate" gambit has the signature of a classic dirty trick, a la Donald Segretti.
And we don't have to speculate as to its origins.
First, the whole "macaca gotcha" is predicated on some surreptitiously taped comments at a closed fundraiser in -- shudder -- godless, gay, Red Frisco. The tape was gone over with a fine tooth comb for five days, redacted and edited to a clip which where the two predictable hot-button issues in Pennsylvania politics -- God and guns -- are conveniently mentioned, then it is dumped on the wires at 4 p.m. on a Friday, when the regular editors are relieved by the second-stringers for the weekend, and the headline editors are notorious tardy and sometimes even recalcitrant about altering the lineup for stretches of seventy-two hours.
The Machine gamed the system again, relying on Halperin, Vandehei, and Smith to carry their water for the weekend with an eye toward capturing the Monday news cycle early when Joe Scarborough takes up the drumbeat at dawn. The War Room customized the message for its favorite shills, then set the juggernaut in motion.
In short, the whole gambit smacks of cheap politics in the genre which was cutting edge FIFTEEN-years ago, before the twenty-four hour news cycle and the new Internet paradigm. It is classic Atwater/Carville "control the MSM narrative" politics, presently quaint and obsolete, which carries the signature of the prime suspects.
And it underscores precisely and absolutely WHY Hillary Clinton should never be President. The days where "spin" replaced truth in political discourse are over! But, in classic 1984 style, the Clintons persist in the Charles Foster Kane delusion that "people will believe what I tell them to believe."
Bill Clinton wasn't going off the reservation when he brought up Tuzla (yet again) last week. He was simply rehashing the 1992 campaign, where it was SOP to revive bad stories with the express purpose of reinventing the narrative in a positive manner. It is classic from the old Michael "Perception Is Reality" Deaver stylebook.
That is what exasperates me about this episode: It is manufactured, hackneyed, superannuated and tiresome. But it is effective in that it controls the MSM through a weekend news cycle.
Damn these evil-minded and mean-spirited dinosaurs.
When, I ask, is someone in the party with some juice and some backbone going to say to Hillary and Bill, "If you are right that Barack Obama is unelectable, then you are also wrong and shit out of luck, because the alternative to Barack Obama is NOT Hillary Clinton. You'll lose too. The alternative, if you force this issue, will be someone else. So either play your hand or shut the Hell up forever."
Rocky, indeed! She's become more like Hiroo Onoda