I first noticed the Clinton's attack mentality just before the Iowa caucuses when their campaign started putting out the message that Obama was weak on Choice.
I have been convinced for some time that the Clintons are embracing Karl Rove's political tactics, one of which is to accuse your opponent of what you yourself do, and not simply to accuse, but to do so with wounded outrage and bigger than life drama, just as Hillary is doing today.
In fact, the Clintons have long admired Rove as a strategist and early on their campaign boasted about using his tactics. Follow me below the fold and I'll give you links to back my claim.
Just a quick word about why I'm writing this before I do. Last fall I was leaning in Hillary's direction for a while. I was defending her to my friends and associates. I kind of fit the profile of someone you'd expect to find in the Hillary camp, I suppose: a woman in her late fifties who’s been politically active most of her life.
I'm kind of like this woman, only older, not as high profile:
Like Lorna Brett Howard, I'm not defending Hillary anymore because I'm angry about her lies and her campaign tactics.
My turn around happened pretty much in the same time frame as Ms. Howard’s. My anger was not as focused, however: I found the Clinton's tactics disturbing whether they were about Choice, religion, or race; including the inferences about Obama's teen drug use (rather ironic coming from "I didn't inhale" camp), snide remarks about Sidney Poitier, or attacks about supporting a slumlord that distorted the facts.
I've been angry about Bill's fairy tale talk, about the law suit in Nevada and Bill's dishonest defense of it, and about the Clinton campaign's subsequent cheat tactics in the caucuses. But what I've really gotten angry about is the sleazy way the Clintons have refused to take responsibility for what they're doing and have instead employed the patent Rovian technique of calling the victim of their attacks, the attacker.
As I said up top, the Clintons long ago acknowledged their admiration for Karl Rove as a strategist and admitted that their campaign was employing Rovian strategies:
The Clintons recognize the skill Rove has brought to politics and admire his craft, if not his ideology. Just days after the November 2004 election, Bill Clinton pulled Rove aside at the dedication of the William J. Clinton Presidential Library in Arkansas. "Hey, you did a marvelous job, it was just marvelous what you did," Clinton told Rove, according to the book "The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008," by John F. Harris and Mark Halperin. "I want to get you down to the library. I want to talk politics with you. You just did an incredible job, and I'd like to really get together with you and I think we could have a great conversation."
...former Bush White House communications director [Nicolle Wallace], who worked closely with Rove, said that Clinton "has almost operationalized the whole idea of turning your weakness into strength, message discipline that is almost pathological -- she does not get off message for any reason -- and never skipping an opportunity to exploit her opponent's weaknesses."
Clinton's campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, seems to agree with that assessment, having effectively vowed to run her operation much as Rove did his two successful national campaigns. "She expresses admiration for the way George W. Bush's campaign team controlled its message, and, given her druthers, would run this race no differently," Michelle Cottle writes this month in New York magazine. " 'We are a very disciplined group, and I am very proud of it,' she says with a defiant edge."
Both of the above quotes are from a Washington Post article in August, 2007 that quotes The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008, by John F. Harris and Mark Halperin.
I really don't know if I can vote for Hillary if she's the nominee. The reason? She's lost my respect. I do not believe the Clintons or any politician should be rewarded for embracing the politics of distortion and lies; it is a form of violence. It promotes hatred. To me, the Clintons seem like they've become versions of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, drunk on the possibility of power, serving only themselves and their ambitions.
And, frankly, the more Hillary accuses Obama of things like plagiarism, the more hypocritical she seems to me.