CNN: Clark Campaign hits Kerry

Candy Crowley was just talking about how the Clark Campaign sent a bunch of chickenwings from the Hawk and Dove Bar in Washington to the Kerry Campaign, saying something to the effect that Kerry's efforts to have it both ways had the Clark Campaign confused.
'they couldnt figure out whether he was being a hawk or a dove, so they sent him wings'

you know - almost every time the clark camp has hit an opponent it's been with an element of humor. I wish everyone else would follow that example - and try and lighten this all up a bit. This one was pretty funny.

yes, you can have it both ways.

It is sharp, intelligent humor. It wouldn't surprise me if it was Clark himself dreaming this up.

But I bet this was a campaign worker to campaign worker hit. They all know each other and have worked together and it's play time, looks like.

It happens all the time. I'm surprised CNN reported on it. They've been desperate for anything to make Clark look like he's on the attack. The pundits practically beg him to attack Dean, every interview.

DTH

Puts him a notch or two above what the pundits expect. At least he doesn't get controlled by them, and that I love about him!

;)

Wonder what food item will be on it's way to the Clark campaign? LOL

:shrug: :)

:)

I wonder if he would care for some this week.

Simon delivers would be fitting...

and everyone had waffles with maple syrup... Now THAT'S TASTY! :D

I really do like how Clark does things, just the right tone and nuance.

Not a hawk, not a dove; that's why I'm firmly in Kerry's camp! Chickenwings, all around!

Clark's campaign is just having fun jockeying for position. Kerry's statements are consistent. Removal of Saddam was ALWAYS the goal, but he didn't share Bush's view of using force BEFORE all diplomatic measures were taken.

Why is that so difficult to grasp? Kerry's been the same on this since 1998.

what a 'tender' slam. awwww ;) he he

...they seem to have a handle on his "position". In most circles outside Washington, it's called "talking out both sides of one's mouth"...

Clark is pretty much in a similar position so he should appreciate it in others. Of course, Clark is in the Hague right now, so I see this as a campaign worker's idea. Someone playing to a perception that has already been disproven by the NYT and Thomas Oliphant in the Boston Globe.

Oliphant's was a mea culpa because he had been one of the journalists who first thought that Kerry was trying to have it both ways, and finally realized that all Kerry's statements were not only consistent, but, prescient the way a president should be prescient.

Smart people know what nuance is.

Smarter people know what a sloppy, undefined campaign is.

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m1571/2003_Sept_16/107543547/p2/article.jhtml?term=

...Years later, local journalists who remember this era say Kerry was known as "live shot" for his strenuous efforts to appear on the nightly news.

Gee. Kerry tried to get word out about US Government corruption at the highest levels and what thanks does he get?

Things haven't improved, for Kerry, Democrats and America in general. Today's media barely covered 9-11, Selection 2000, ENRON Energy Policy, etc.

Corporate McMedia do like Howard Dean's electronic grassroots campaign, however. Why? Four more years of Bush.

On the simplistic, distorted view that Kerry wants it both ways on the IWR, Kerry has explained over and over that he was for having the UN do its job and if needed, have the UN get a multinational force to go into Iraq to get rid of Saddam's WMDs as a last resort. Kerry never agreed that Bush could invade Iraq unilaterally and kick out the UN and go for an oil grab.

Anyone who brings up the distorted view about Kerry's IWR vote are being intellectually dishonest.

On Clark's opinion that he was always against the Iraq War, he did indeed say the opposite in this interview with CNN last September:

"On balance, I probably would have voted for it," Clark said. "The simple truth is this: When the president of the United States comes to you and makes the linkages and lays the power of the office on you, and you're in a crisis, the balance of the judgment probably goes to the president of the United States."
-Wesley Clark

Link

Sounds like Clark needs to get an order of waffles.

is indistinguishable from Dean's. Clark also feels it (IWR) should not be a litmus test for the democratic candidate. Clark testified to the senate in Sept 2002, you can always check his statement there without the spin from the reporters looking to trap somebody.

Whatever else you say, it sure looks like the Clark campaign has a great sense of humor ;-)

need to make dinner, man cannot live on DU alone.

"It is, however, true that the morning after the first televised presidential debate, as pundits were trying to decide whether Nixon or John F. Kennedy had won, Tuck enlisted an elderly woman to put on a Nixon button, embrace the candidate in front of cameras and proclaim, "Don't worry, son! He beat you last night, but you'll get him next time."

WaPo

:evilgrin:

OMG, I never heard that story before!

DTH

Kerry doesn't want it both ways. It's a false dilemma - either you support everything Bush did, or none of it. How about he seconded Bill Clinton's 1998 statement (which he probably helped formulate):

"The credible threat to use force, and when necessary, the actual use of force, is the surest way to contain Saddam's weapons of mass destruction program, curtail his aggression and prevent another Gulf War."

And yet felt that Bush had somehow managed to find the most incompetent route at every juncture along the way.

If you think that holding Saddam accountable after his UNSCOM hi-jinks was the right thing done wrong, I hardly think it is "muddled" thinking or trying to have it "both ways." Especially since Kerry, unlike Dean and Clark, has been totally consistent since 1997.

n/t

I don't think that Clark and Kerry are that far apart in their thinking which includes:

• The problem of Saddam and the broken UN resolutions belonged in the UN. Also, they are both hip to foreign policy and understand that bush was putting a stick on the table. Please...please would someone remember the sequence of events. Bush said early on that we would go to war under the OLD resolutions. We, the Democrats, demanded he return to the UN. Of course he sent an unacceptable resolution to the Senate, but they did work on, if only a little. Troops were already being moved, and the bombing was going on daily.

• Blair's lawyers said that they needed a second resolution because the one that left our Senate, the one the UN voted on, was not enough to jusify a war. But, Bush and Blair couldn't get the second resolution so they just went to war.

• Bush never needed any resolution...not really. Clinton has said that. Clark and Kerry must know that. This resolution is just bullshit. Bullshit that is never mentioned, but everyone argues about. Clark said when he made those comments he was musing about a problem. He was working the problem through a series of already made decisions that he could not control, because he was not in the Senate.

It was a hypothetical, and Clark knows damn well, that bush never ever needed that resolution. If we can't grasp that then we are truly sunk.

The difference between Clark and Kerry's position on Iraq (and since I'm not sure about Kerry, I admit to guessing) is that Clark didn't want to go to Iraq because he said it was the wrong war. He wasn't looking at the situation from the Senate's problem with a resolution, he was looking at it from the view point of a military, geopolitical strategist. The war that held the highest priority was in Afghanistan. The country that most needed to be stabilized was Afghanistan. Iraq meant diverting intelligence and attention from the problem of terrorism. It also strained alliances that we absolutely need if we are to become more "seamless" (Clark's term) within the framework of legal and intelligence international communities than the world's bin Ladens.

Clark and Kerry have been friends for some time. I hope that is still the case when the primaries are over.

The media fog (and over-advocacy) certainly make it a challenge to keep one's eye on the ball.

The war was and remains a very ignorant and illegal policy choice.

The reason it was ignorant is seen in the results. None of the results obtained were unpredictable or entirely avoidable. Better management would not have made this venture significantly more successful.

It was an illegal choice because pre-emptive attacks against sovereign nations that pose no imminent threat are prohibited under international law and treaties that we are signatories to.

of the intelligence reports, as Clark has stated, he saw them and never saw an imminent threat. Plus it wasn't like we were going in to stop atrocities either. We let those happen a long time ago.

Personally I believe we should have taken the longer, slower approach to actually winning the hearts and minds. I won't say it would have been easy.

WES WILL WIN!!!!! :bounce:

biggest group of Chicken Hawks ever inhabit that place...

:puke: first he was a repuglian, now he is a dem...
then he was for the Iraq invasion, now he is against...
then he was for creating jobs, now he wants to export computer programming jobs to India and China...B-)

I say...vote for DEAN since we know where he stands, and will stand in future.

And you're knocking Clark for (allegedly) changing his mind.

You are absolutely hilarious.

DTH

But yours is hysterical. :7

has certainly altered my choice of candidate. I certainly don't want to be voting for no repuglians. Thank you so much for enlightening me.

That was one hell of a night.

Cool bar/restaurant tavern kinda like cheers but more cramped.

Ohhhh,

Both, I guess.


That IS funny.

I've kinda been waitin to see how Clark would approach attacks on the other dems. This is cool and entirely fair.

retyred in fla
“good night paul, wherever you are”
So I read this book

Now THAT, my friends, is the art of politics!

Nice going Wes. After Howard Dean, you da man.