Jake tapper gets it right

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/01/obama-v-clinton.html


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I know he wants his wife to beat Obama. And it seems that unleashing the Big Dog seems to be working for the Clinton campaign.

Perhaps some voters are even touched by his passion.

But let's be clear -- Bill Clinton is spreading demonstrably false information.

There's winning ugly, and there's winning with honor.

Does it matter? Or is all fair in politics and war?

-- jpt

show it to be false.

As Hillary stated, the context and manner the Reagan comments were spoken leads many to hear it as praise of Reagan. If the fact that the word "praise" is missing from Obama's words makes Bill's interpretation "demonstrably false information" then Tapper should just add an Obama avatar to his column, in my opinion.

Sen. Clinton 's "I have to say, you know, my leading opponent the other day said that he thought the Republicans had better ideas than Democrats the last ten to fifteen years." is a reasonable interpretation of "He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. They felt like, you know, with all the excesses of the 60's and the 70's and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating and he tapped into what people were already feeling. Which is, people wanted clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamic and entrepreneurship that had been missing....I think it's fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last ten, fifteen years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom."

Guess Dems did not have "ideas" from the Bush presidency through Clinton till now - at least they were not the party of ideas - guess the GOP must have been the ones pushing Universal Health in 93. Now what was the Obama idea that was a break from ideas that were floated by Democrats before he became a Senator running for President?

Indeed that sounds like it was coming from a GOP candidate.

Characterizing Obama's Reagan statement as "praising" is pretty mild. Praise exists along quite a long scale from lukewarm appreciation of say one small aspect of someone or something, to outright adoration. I think Reagan spoke well. That's praise. It doesn't say anything about what I think of his policies or how I see his Presidency in the larger picture, which is not favorable.

Obama went way, way beyond faint praise for Reagan, indeed, Obama praises the entire Publican establishment that Reagan ushered in.

Obama thinks that Republicans have been "the party of ideas", and that Republicanism is dynamic and entrepreneurial; that Republicans are "clear and optimistic", and in a tip to his own rhetoric, that they are about 'change', ie "challenging the conventional wisdom". Obama believes that we "want a return to that sense" of Republican optimism and to the "sense of accountability" that they bring.

It's obvious that he still holds Republicans out as the adults in our political system. And more importantly, it sheds a whole new light on just exactly how "not refighting the battles" of the 1990's fits in to his perspective on our politics of the past sixteen years. Now we get to see that he thinks the 60's and the 70's were periods of excess. That is, just to clarify, the cultural awakenings along several fronts in the 1960's and the wrenching accountability of the Nixon-Watergate 1970's we're talking about. So the Democratic politics of the 60's and 70's were bad, and the Democratic politics of the Clinton 1990's were also bad. While the Republican 1980's were the time of ideas, optimism, dynamism and entrepreneurship, with the accountability (of adults) bringing clarity to our country.

Obama becomes a bigger and bigger asshole every time I see him. For the past two weeks he's been the biggest race-baiter I've ever seen on the Democratic side of the aisle. Now he unveils his long-held affinity for Ronald Reagan and the politics he represents, even after all of this time - enough time to put it into perspective, where it doesn't hold up well. And it goes well beyond an appreciation for the skills Reagan employed. He just lionized everything about Reaganism, and in doing so helped me to understand exactly why he is always ready to dump on Democrats about almost anything.

I think Hillary was so soft on Obama. She should be pushing this hard from here on out, and not so tepidly as she did for South Carolina. She, and Bill, and other Democrats, should lay out exactly where Obama is coming from, and alot more pointedly than she did in that first debate since Obama filled in the missing pieces of what he really thinks about the last thirty years in America's political evolution. Obama is, essentially, a Reagan Democrat, that is, *still* a Reagan Democrat even as most of the last of those have finally seen the ultimate fruition of what that ideology amounts to.

I don't want him ever representing us.

now I understand :think:

:rofl:

:think:

winning at any cost.

"They both put their own ambitions above the country's needs over the last 8 years." This is the final stretch for his lyin' ass.

I don't think like Jake Tapper, though..that it's working for him.

Did he lament the swiftboating? The demonizing of Kerry? The constant fabrication of fear-and-smear from the Right?

Everyone know that.

Don

but he quickly caught on.

You got to make some compromises if you want to be a network 'correspondent'. Like principles.

Jake typically has little good to say about Democrats with that nasally, sarcastic tone of his.