Boston Globe Slams GOP, Republican Candidates on Hillary Smear

[wyldwolf]

IN AN interview with The Boston Globe editorial board on Oct. 10, Senator Hillary Clinton made a remark that has been so badly twisted by her opponents that we feel it necessary to reprint the interview transcript that contains the remark.

The quote that was lifted from the interview and magnified by Clinton's opponents is this: "I have a million ideas. The country can't afford them all." Within hours of the Globe's news report on Clinton's visit, the Republican National Committee sent out an e-mail alert claiming the remark showed how expensive a Clinton presidency would be for the taxpayers. It launched a "Clinton Spend-o-meter" on its website, tracking the potential cost of Clinton's campaign proposals.

A week later at the Republican presidential debate in Orlando, Fla., Rudy Giuliani played the remark for laughs, quoting her and adding the zinger: "No kidding Hillary, America can't afford you!"

All in good fun, perhaps, until you learn that Clinton was saying she opposes big government spending, not the other way around.

At the Globe meeting, Clinton was asked why she had turned cool on a proposal for so-called baby bonds that she has spoken favorably about just the week before. Baby bonds - sometimes called Individual Development Accounts - are small nest eggs government sets aside for each American child, which would build until adulthood when they could be used for college tuition or a down payment on a house. Though ridiculed when Clinton mentioned them, baby bonds have bipartisan support and can be an effective way to fight poverty. Clinton was asked whether dropping a good, new, bold idea like this was a symptom of what some critics have called a too-cautious campaign.

Here is Clinton's full answer: "Well, I have a lot of good, new, bold ideas, and I have to make some choices among them." She explained that baby bonds didn't have the level of political support of other proposals she had to help people pay for college. "I have a million ideas. I can't do all of them. I happen to think in running a disciplined campaign - especially when it comes to fiscal responsibility, which is what I'm trying to do - everything I propose I have to pay for. You know, you go to my website, you'll see what I would use to pay for what I've proposed. So I've got a lot of ideas, I just obviously can't propose them all. I can't afford them all. The country can't afford them all."

Clinton has adopted a pay-as-you-go rule for new spending, much like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's rules for the Democratic Congress. In order to avoid ballooning the deficit, the pay-go rules require a funding source be attached to any new spending. The 60-cent hike in the cigarette tax that would have paid for the expansion of children's healthcare is one example.

What Americans really can't afford are cheap political distortions.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/10/28/what_hillary_said/

[SteppingRazor]

1. Regardless of the content, that title is one of the funniest typos I've seen in a while.

;)

[calimary]

2. It's more than a Boston Glob. It's the ENTIRE press corpse Glob.

Even so, I'm glad to see this. We should have major newspapers and broadcast/cable outlets ACROSS THE BOARD debunking some of these tall tales from the Pinocchios of the GOP. Most of 'em have grown noses so long they could saw them off and walk all the way to Iraq on them.

[SteppingRazor]

4. To be fair to the Globe, it's actually one of the best papers in the country.

And, for that matter, not every journalist is an unthinking hack. You just have to know who you're reading and what subject they're covering.

[calimary]

11. That's certainly true. More often than not, I recall the Boston Globe had

stories that the mainstream (Washington) media avoided, ignored, or just didn't notice.

It's a particular bugaboo of mine - how irresponsible and downright comatose the media has been. Man, if this were Clinton and Monica, they'd all be putting in overtime working the story as if their spouses', children's, and pets' very lives depended on it. My fear is that the reverse will happen once we get a Dem back in the White House. The Rip Van Winkles on the news media will wake up, decide they went too easy on the president, so by God they're gonna rectify that NOW. Translated: they'll fully wake up when the Dems are fully back in power and the wrong-wing hate-radio/tv machinery will be urging them on, and leading them by the nose. I remember reading accounts from one or two reporters awhile ago that they realized they'd been kinda hard on Clinton, so they were gonna do things differently. So they wound up going WAY overboard in the other direction, and gave bush an absolute free pass. They "fixed" it in a completely cockamamie way.

[SteppingRazor]

13. Oh, I agree there was an awful lack of spine among journalists...

especially in Bush's first term, right after 9/11.

And, for that matter, you shouldn't take my pro-press stance on its face. I am, after all, a journalist. ;)

[wyldwolf]

3. I tend to type too fast. You should see some of my typos in college

Once in health class, I typed "vagina" instead of "angina." The professor made a joke about where my mind was. :)

[SteppingRazor]

5. Bwahaha! Kidding aside, though, the Globe definitely deserves kudos for this.

:thumbsup:

[MethuenProgressive]

6. ...which was echoed right here on good old DU.

DUers need to learn: When something really really bad about a Democrat hits the Blog-a-rama, check it out before piling on, even if you do hate the Democrat the smear is aimed at. There's enough truth about all the candidates to argue over, don't waste time arguing over fiction.

[pnwmom]

7. Good point. n/t

[cuke]

8. This is why the "repukes hate her like no one else" is BS

Hillary has HUGE institutional support, which means she has a lot of allies in the politically important institutions of this nation, like the media. She has had lots of time to courts friends in the press. When she is unfairly attacked in by repukes, and there's no doubt that would happen to any dem that's nominated, Hillary will have people in the media fighting to defend her.

[Vincardog]

9. Witness:The Corporate Controlled Media has been pushing her "inevitability" for over 2 years.

[avrdream]

10. When that quote came out I didn't have time to dig deeper,

but I figured it was just more of the Republican distortions. Pretty cool how they turn things around, huh? And they haven't even really started yet. The nominee is going to get all sorts of shit thrown at them.

Kudos to the Globe for pointing the error out.

[gratuitous]

12. One point for the Globe

But against the usual avalanche of out-of-context smears and distortions, it's barely a fart in a frying pan. What it really shows me is that the Republicans will say anything, stoop to any level, plumb any depth, to try to find something to use against Democrats. And yet, for all that, there will be a stampede here at DU and sadly at a lot of other liberal and progressive sites that will miss the original comment, latch onto the Republican smear/distortion, and go on and on about so-and-so shouldn't have said that, or gone there, or done something else.

See, the bottom line is that it doesn't matter what Democrats say or do, Republicans are going to distort and smear. In this one case, the source of the smear actually stood up and said that the Republicans were playing dirty pool, and good for them. I'd like to see this become a habit, but I know it won't. Which is why this one instance is so singular.

And more to the point, let's all pledge to take a close look at the smears that are being peddled to us. Yes, it's useful to highlight differences between our favorite candidate and his or her opponent; but ridiculous smears and out-of-context distortions don't serve anyone except the oppressive forces that have hur our country so badly in the last decade.

[cobalt1999]

14. Wait, I'm confused...

I thought the "DU conventional wisdom" stated Republicans WANTED Hillary. Why would they try and smear her before the primaries?

I want to see the twisted mind bending that puts those two things together...