When comments from Barack Obama's former preacher errupted into the spotlight earlier this month his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton seemed hesitant to make a campaign issue out of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's controversial comments. Her campaign aides refused to comment on the former pastor's satements, and would not say Wright's comments were the cause of what they saw as Obama's sinking poll numbers.All of that hesitance ended Wednesday. As Obama watched the Wright storm settle down enough to enjoy a couple days of relaxation on the beach, Clinton re-sparked the maelstrom in an interview with a newspaper long considered one of the main organs of the "vast right-wing conspiracy."
If Clinton believes she needs to use the "Tonya Harding option" to take the Democratic nomination, it appears Richard Mellon Scaife is her Shane Stant and the Pittsburgh Tribune Review editorial board is his metal baton.
For an hour-and-a-half Tuesday afternoon, Clinton sat down with editors and reporters from the paper that spent endless hours investigating her husband's presidential administration. Scaife, the scion to the Mellon fortune who poured millions of his own dollars into Clinton conspiracy-mongering, sat directly to the right of the former first lady during the meeting.Asked about Wright's comments, she jumped in with both feet, implying that the pastor who recently retired from Trinity United Church in Chicago was peddling "hate speech" and that Obama had not done enough to condemn him. The paper didn't ask about Wright's 1998 visit with other religious leaders invited to the White House while Bill Clinton was mired in the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
"He would not have been my pastor," Hillary Clinton told the Tribune-Review Tuesday. "You know, you don't choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend.
"I spoke out against (fired radio host) Don Imus ... saying that hate speech was unacceptable in any setting, and I believe that," she continued. "If I had sat there for 20 years, I think you all would have a lot to say about someone who gave comparable sermons. I just think you have to speak out against that. You certainly have to do that, if not explicitly, then implicitly by getting up and moving."
Obama's campaign condemned Clinton's comments.
“After originally refusing to play politics with this issue, it’s disappointing to see Hillary Clinton’s campaign sink to this low in a transparent effort to distract attention away from the story she made up about dodging sniper fire in Bosnia," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton. "The truth is, Barack Obama has already spoken out against his pastor’s offensive comments and addressed the issue of race in America with a deeply personal and uncommonly honest speech. The American people deserve better than tired political games that do nothing to solve the larger challenges facing this country.”
During a press conference later Tuesday, Clinton repeated her implicit condemnation without outright saying Obama should have left the church. She demurred when asked if Wright's comments were now "on the table" when trying to convince super delegates to reverse her essentially insurmountable deficit among pledged delegates. Clinton said she was simply answering a question "about what I would do."
Asked about the fact that Scaife's newspaper was the forum for her first comments on the Wright issue, Clinton laughed and said "it was actually very pleasant," although she recognized it was a "somewhat counterintuitive" place to sit down for an interview.
The campaign continued its offensive Wednesday, distributing a memo continuing its "just words" attacks on Obama and taking umbrage that his campaign would respond to her interview with the conservative paper.
"Yesterday, a Pennsylvania editorial board asked Sen. Clinton how she would have 'responded if [her] pastor had said some of the things that Rev. Wright said?' In response, she said Rev. Wright would not have been her pastor, an honest view shared by many Americans," the Clinton campaign memo said. "Sen. Clinton’s response was sincere. The Obama attack was disingenuous."
Tuesday's 90-minute session was not the first time the Clintons have sought to make peace with the man who helped stoke the right's vitriol towards them. Scaife sat down with Bill Clinton in his Harlem office last year where the two had a friendly chat for more than two hours, and Scaife promised to donate generously to the William J. Clinton Foundation's efforts to fight AIDS in Africa, as Newsweek reported.
While Scaife hasn't fully hopped on board the Hillary Clinton express -- he donated $2,300 to GOP nominee John McCain's campaign this year -- Obama seems to be taking the brunt of attacks from his organizations.
Conservative magazine NewsMax, which is partially funded by Scaife, has focused heavily on Wright's speeches, even before the issue bubbled into the mainstream in recent weeks. "Obama's Pastor Slurs Italians" is its most recent offering on the subject. An inaccurate NewsMax article about Obama attending one of Wright's sermons made its way into a column by conservative New York Times columnist Bill Kristol, who later had to issue a correction.
The Clinton campaign also has used onetime Scaife organ the American Spectator, which the billionaire used to investigate conspiracy theories, to distribute dirt on Obama. Clinton's campaign distributed an article from the arch-conservative journal, with which Scaife has since severed ties, to highlight comments from Obama adviser Gen. Tony McPeak.
"It's obviously a little Ironic that the Clintonites have been embracing all sorts of Clinton conspiracy-theorists lately," observers The New Republic's Noam Scheiber. "The Spectator was home to the notorious "Arkansas Project," which was mostly funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, the once rabid Clinton-basher whom Hillary sat down with yesterday in Pittsburgh."
The reaction elsewhere to Clinton's cozying up to the "vast right-wing conspiracy" has been even more pronounced.
"Hell Has Officially Frozen Over," reads the headline on conservative National Review blog The Corner, highlighting the photo of Clinton and Scaife.
Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall question's Clinton's contention that her Wright condemnation was simply a response to a question she had to answer.
"This is sort of like, 'Hey, I go on Hannity and next thing you know he's asking me about Wright and Farrakhan. How was I supposed to see that coming?'" he writes.
"I don't know just how this went down. But the idea Sen. Clinton and her staff went into an editorial board meeting with Scaife and his lackey reporters without a clear sense that they were going to get at least one choice Jeremiah Wright question just somehow doesn't ring true to me."
