Hillary gets savaged by ‘New York Post’ pundit
It’s owned by the fat cat media mogul, Rupert Murdock. An Australian by birth, he also owns Fox News, the home of windbag Bill O’Reilly, and other chatter mouths. They are usually found slobbering on the Far Right of the U.S. political spectrum.
Confession: In a just world, I would like to see Murdock deported in leg irons to Australia, clothed in an orange Jump suit! (Well, we can all dream can’t we?)
In its Sunday, April 3, 2016 edition, the “Post” set loose one of its scribblers, John Podhoretz, to savage the candidacy of Democratic presidential front runner, Hillary Clinton. Podhoretz’s nickname is “Poddy.” He is a flaming Neocon, who thought the bloody Iraq War was a good idea for our America.
If you’re waiting for the Chicken Hawk Podhoretz to pen a column apologizing for his warmongering and knee jerk support of the Bush-Cheney Gang, don’t hold your breath. It’s not in the cards.
The headline of Podhoretz’s hatchet job is – “The Godmother.” A photoshopped pic, accompanied his ugly rant, featured Hillary’s mug in a Don Vito Corleone pose. She’s wearing a black tuxedo jacket, with a black bow tie, white shirt and a red carnation in her coat lapel. Does it get any dirtier than portraying a presidential candidate as a Mobster?
Podhoretz claimed Hillary scared the popular U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and VP Joe Biden, a veteran politico, “out of the race.” Really? Who knew? I don’t think either Warren or Biden scare easily. Podhoretz bellowed further: “So what if she lied about her emails? So what if the FBI was on her trail? Life was good.”
Then, Podhoretz began turning the strews tighter on the former First Lady – slowly at first. He underscored the fact that the other top Democratic presidential candidate, “Bernie” Sanders, won’t go away. He called him “the Energizer Bunny on steroids.”
Hillary, Podhoretz insisted, is running fearful of Bernie, despite having all of those super-delegates to the national convention tucked away in her huge pocketbook. Bernie did win, he underscored, “three Democratic primaries” a week ago.
Bernie does have “a slight lead,” Podhoretz pointed out, too, in Wisconsin, with thanks going to the enthusiasm of a “highly organized left wing” in that state. The Badger State’s primary is scheduled for this Tuesday, April 5th.
Podhoretz, then goes out on a limb and predicates a win for Bernie in that crucial battle. If accurate, that would make for four wins in a row for Bernie and a total of “16 victories” to date.
The Right Wing pundit thinks, too, that it’s not only Bernie’s potential winning streak that’s bothering “Don Vito” Hillary. It’s the fact that during this election, she has been repeatedly exposed as taking “gigantic speaking fees from investment firms.” And, that these big donors all have intimate ties to the “fossil fuel” industries and the Wall Street Banksters. This kind of charge, Podhortetz, said “can go viral.”
To make his case against Hillary, Podhoretz emphasized how she “lost her temper the other day.” Hillary supposedly screamed, “I’m sick of the Sanders campaign lying about me.” Podhorertz thought that was kind of strange, since Bernie is the “gentlest opposition candidate any front-runner has faced in the history of the American politics.” He will get a lot of agreement on that one.
Besides Podhoretz went on, the story about Hillary taking “fossil-fuel money,” for her presidential campaign, didn’t come from any of Bernie’s true believers. It came from Greenpeace, an organization Podhoretz described as a “radical group.” (Query: If Greenpeace is a radical group, what does that make those Tea Baggers? Quakers?)
Greenpeace had recently disclosed that Hillary had received “$300,000 in donations from people who work in the oil and gas industries.” This is all scary for Hillary, Podhoretz said, because it “resonates with the idea that Clinton is a corporatist in liberal garb secretly plotting to serve the interests of big business and Wall Street against the modest folk.”
Question: When Podhoretz was younger, did he work on the staff of ex-U.S. Sen. Joseph “Witch Hunter” McCarthy (R-WI)?
Moving on. In addition to Bernie’s surge at the polling place, Clinton has something else to worry about, according to Podhoretz. The Bernie surge is made even more potent by the fact that he was able to raise in the first quarter of 2016, “over $100 million!”
“No one,” Podhoretz said, “has raised this much money this fast. Ever.” As to raising huge amounts of campaign money, distractors to Podhoretz’s broadside, can say, yea sure, but what good did all that cash do for the candidacy of the Repug, Jeb Bush?
At the end of the day, Podhoretz, however, owned up to the fact that absent a total Hillary “meltdown,” she will be the nominee of the Democratic Party in 2016. I suppose he just needed to give Hillary a kick or two to satisfy his Liberal-bashing tendencies.
There is, however, a kernel of truth in Podhoretz’s tirade.
As a former Alternate Delegate from the state of Maryland to the National Democratic Convention in 1976, in New York City, at Madison Square Garden, I was totally taken aback by the victory of Jimmy Carter from Georgia in that contest. I was a Jerry Brown for President supporter then, and Brown was a popular young Liberal governor from California (1975-1983).
I recall walking out at the end of that convention onto 7th Avenue, in NYC, in early July, 1976, with my then political mentor, the late State Senator, Harry J. McGuirk. And, we were both wondering: “What the hell happened in there?”
Bottom line: Anything is possible at the National Democratic Convention set for July 25-28, 2016, in Philadelphia, PA.
I hate to agree with Podhoretz, but he just might be on to something. Political junkies, watch this space for updates.
Bill Hughes is an attorney, author, actor and photographer. His latest book is “Byline Baltimore.” It can be found at: https://www.amazon.com/William-Hughes/e/B00N7MGPXO/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1