Melissa’s Soapbox

How Hillary gets this …

“I have to say, you know, my leading opponent the other day said that he thought the Republicans had better ideas than Democrats the last ten to fifteen years.”

… from this …

… is hard to comprehend.  As if that’s not sleazy enough, Bill chimes in:

“Her principal opponent said that since 1992, the Republicans have had all the good ideas.  It goes along with their plan to ask Republicans to become Democrats for a day and caucus with you tomorrow, and then go back and become Republicans so they can participate in the Republican primary.  I’m not making this up, folks.”

Hmm, not making this up, eh?

Factcheck.org disagrees with Billary …

We can’t speak to how things “came across” to Clinton, but we’ve listened to the entire interview and to our ears, it’s just flatly false that Obama said he “really liked the ideas of the Republicans.”  Clinton is referring to what Obama told the editorial board of the Reno Gazette-Journal.  There’s a difference between praising someone for having ideas and praising the idea itself.  Obama is doing the former – and just as clearly not doing the latter.  He says the GOP approach has “played itself out,” for example.

Of course, Obama spokesperson, Bill Burton, explains the underlying issue:

“It’s hard to take Hillary Clinton’s latest attack seriously when she’s the one who supported George Bush’s war in Iraq, the most damaging Republican idea of our generation.  While others were triangulating and poll-testing their positions, Senator Obama has been fighting for progressive ideals for over two decades.”