Publication: Conservative Review
Hillary's Slush-Fund Attack | |
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THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW
December 14, 2007
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Hillary's Slush-Fund Attack
By Robert D. Novak
Townhall.com
WASHINGTON - David Axelrod, the seasoned Chicago Democratic
political operative who is chief strategist for Sen. Barack
Obama's presidential campaign, was taken by surprise in the
last minute of CBS's "Face the Nation" on Dec. 2. Howard
Wolfson, Sen. Hillary Clinton's spokesman, accused Obama of
running a "slush fund." In fact, the Clinton campaign was
spreading that story privately months ago.
Last summer, a senior Clinton aide told a famous Democratic
personage believed favorable to Obama that the Illinois
senator was using his "leadership" political-action
committee to spread money around the country to grease
his presidential prospects. That message was private when
Clinton seemed far ahead for the Democratic nomination. It
became public when Obama threatened to overtake her.
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Before Wolfson spoke out, one of Clinton's close supporters
was spreading the word of unspecified defects in Obama that
should deter Democrats from supporting him for president.
This is the Clinton style that has proved effective for
two decades, but Obama has continued to close the gap. This
attack mode works best when the accusations are hidden from
public view.
Last summer, a few Clinton insiders -- headed by her
Senate chief of staff, Tamera Luzzatto -- paid a presumably
social visit to the Cape Cod, Mass., vacation home of a
prestigious Democrat reported to be in Obama's corner.
Luzzatto warned that Obama was ethically challenged because
of his leadership PAC. My sources indicated that this was
not an isolated incident, and the slush-fund story was
spread widely.
In a later incident, a Democrat, not on Clinton's Senate or
campaign staffs but close to her, a month ago approached a
party activist who has not made a commitment with this
message: Skeletons in Obama's closet would make him vulner-
able if nominated. He did not elaborate and said the
Clinton campaign would keep its anti-Obama information to
itself, remembering mutually destructive assaults between
Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt in 2004 that enabled John
Kerry's nomination.
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The Clinton campaign denied all this, claiming a Republican
plot. In truth, I have not talked to a single Republican in
my reporting of attacks on Obama. In the wake of these
denials, Wolfson made public his slush-fund accusation on
"Face the Nation," shortly after polls showed Obama passing
Clinton for Iowa's Jan. 3 caucuses:
"There's a lot that voters don't know about Barack Obama,"
said Wolfson, "and one thing that they don't know we found
this week, which is that he has been using and operating
a so-called leadership PAC in apparent contravention of
campaign-finance laws." Wolfson demanded that Axelrod say
whether he would "shut down Sen. Obama's slush fund." With
only 20 seconds left, Axelrod's answer sounded lame: "I
think it is shut down, Howard. I don't know that there's
any money left in it."
With more time, Axelrod might have noted that Obama's PAC
contributed to Clinton's 2006 New York re-election and in
the current cycle to Jeanne Shaheen's Senate campaign in
New Hampshire though her husband, Bill Shaheen, heads that
state's Clinton campaign. The slush fund just did not
measure up to claims of dark improprieties by Obama, and
the Clinton campaign did not pursue the issue after volleys
were exchanged between the candidates.
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The attack strategy has not affected Obama, and Clinton's
aura of inevitability fades. Not only has she fallen behind
in Iowa's Jan. 3 caucuses, but polls show subsequent
primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina are too close
to call. Howard Dean was in a much stronger position in
post-Iowa primaries in 2004 than Clinton is today, when his
third-place finish in Iowa was followed by his national
collapse.
The use of the phrase "slush fund" in American politics
is hoary, dating back to a $5 million appropriation in
1874 administered by the federal Treasury, according to
"Safire's New Political Dictionary." In 1952, contributions
to a slush fund for the use of vice presidential candidate
Richard M. Nixon nearly forced him off the Republican
ticket. When Hillary Clinton started slipping two weeks
ago, her campaign responded by unlimbering the Obama slush
fund. The fact that this bomb proved pretty much a dud
raises doubt about the whispers of impropriety by this
untried new candidate.
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