Wrong Again: The attempt to link Clark to Clinton won't hurt him!

[wyldwolf]

To hear the right wing tell it, Bill Clinton has been downstairs in his laboratory, piecing together his Frankenstein candidate, Wesley Clark. The erstwhile general has now arisen from the lab table, ready to obey Dr. Clinton's every command and utterly unaware of the mad doctor's ultimate scheme to use him as a stalking horse to somehow cripple the Democratic field and get wife Hillary into the race.

This is the line being trotted out -- by William Safire in a recent New York Times column, on all the right-wing Web sites, on the chat shows and thence out to an unsuspecting America. And there's a reason it's become the accepted line. Republicans and conservatives are terrified of Clark's potential -- he already beats George W. Bush in one poll, albeit by a statistically meaningless margin. Most frightening to Republicans in that poll, though, was the result that Clark led Bush among men (if a Republican candidate doesn't carry that demographic, he's vapor). They have to smear Clark, roughly and quickly. And so the collective knee jerks, and Republicans reach for what has been for a decade now their first line of offense. Link him to Clinton. Dirty him up. And the mainstream media, which loves this story line, will lap it up.

But there's one problem with the strategy, and it's the same old problem that you'd think they would have figured out by now: America doesn't hate Bill Clinton. The right wing and the major media just can't bring themselves to believe this. And so here they go, making the same old Clinton mistake.

http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2003/09/tomasky-m-09-24.html

[Langis]

1. Of course it won't hurt him

I so wish Clinton could run for President, not becasue I want him back but just to hear all the bitching after he wins.

[wyldwolf]

2. Good excerpt...

All but the most ideologically dyspeptic Americans understand that this country was in better shape under Clinton, and if a potential Clark administration looks to the country as if it will govern like Clinton did, well, that's not something that will scare America off from Clark. (The fact that he's a military man will help distance him from one of Clinton's downsides; assuming he has no personal skeletons, he can distance himself from another.)

It's been hilarious to read some conservatives bellyaching about liberal Bush hatred. It exists, but it doesn't come close to matching the right's Clinton hatred. But let them keep it up. They'll pat one another on the back. And three-quarters of America will ignore them.

[clar]

3. I don't think

it will hurt him in the primary, and should he be the nominee, I don't think association with Clinton will hurt him more than it will help him, but it's hard to tell. Americans don't hate Clinton, but I think a great many have Clinton Fatigue Syndrome. The minute the clinton's get involved, a food fight breaks out. Witness the last couple of weeks. People burn out on the intensity of the battle between Clinton haters and Clinton lovers. One thing is certain, nothing, but nothing mobilizes the right like the Clintons.

[Dubyawatchers]

4. A "Call to Arms"

This is just a "Call to Arms" directed at the rightwingnuts.