Rolling Stone: Hillary, Obama Both 'Superficial Conservatives'

Photo of Tim Graham.
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Terminally tasteless Rolling Stone political reporter Matt Taibbi has a new piece in the February 7 edition proclaiming Hillary Clinton is "The New Nixon." The article comes complete with a cartoon of Hillary with Nixon's ski-lift nose. (Earth to Rolling Stone: the Weekly Standard beat you to this punch by at least a decade.) Taibbi is so far left that both Hillary and Barack Obama are on the right. The pull quote reads "It's Kennedy-Nixon redux -- two superficial conservatives selling highly similar politics."

The longer quote in the text is this: "In Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, we've basically got Kennedy-Nixon redux, and I mean that in the most negative possible sense for both of them -- a pair of superficial, posturing conservatives selling highly similar political packages using different emotional strategies." I quote this not because Taibbi is worth reading, but because his political radar is so mangled.

Earlier in the piece, Taibbi declares Hillary "is basically a Republican at heart...Hillary has basically run exactly Nixon's 1968 campaign." She was "on the opposite side of every issue that sent lefties into the streets in the Bush years, from the war to free trade to the Patriot Act."

The subtitle to the article mentions how her strategy is "straight out of Tricky Dick's paranoid, press-bashing playbook," but there's almost nothing her on her press relations. There's just this:

Hillary's campaign is and always has been presented as a pitched battle for political survival against bitter enemies, and no reporter who has watched the way she stage-manages every last utterance and generally treats the press like a gang of rattlesnakes (which they are, of course) can possibly fail to appreciate the similarity to Nixon's own troubled, hypervigilant relationship with the fourth estate.

To Taibbi, the Nixon analogies continued to flow. Hillary's tearing up in New Hampshire was "Hillary's own personal Checkers speech, a painful bit of self-mutilation tossed off on the last step before the political gallows -- a pure sea-cucumber tactic, scaring us off with a display of vulnerable green guts."

Her victory in New Hampshire reminded him of "all the reasons why we came to hate the Clintons over the years -- why there were scores of very smart people who by November 2000 were actually willing to pull a lever for Ralph Nader rather than go anywhere near a Democratic Party ticket."

—Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center.


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Senator Clinton had a ADA

Senator Clinton had a ADA rating of 95 in 2006 and a perfect 100 in 2005.

Matt Taibbi has a WIHK* rating of 100.

(*who is he kidding?)

But, SMG, notice that Taibbi

But, SMG, notice that Taibbi doesn't talk about Nixon's policies as being "conservative"....just his underhanded tactics.

Nice.

So does Obama

I wonder if she ever thought that while working on Nixon's impeachment that one day her future husband would be the next one to be impeached. Now that is ironic!

Since I've never smoked

the refer...

I never have a clue what these idiot Rolling Stones reporters are talking about.... I'm just not burnt like some of my students...

I've seen the effects up close and personal and if ever I feel I just need to sit and stare at the TV with my mouth wide open... hell I'll hit the shit real hard...

Rolling Stoned

It really is disappointing that people no long have any command of the English language nor a deposit of historical reality or understanding.

Sure I leave words spelled wrong in blogs to give the shallow something to bite on, but what does Rolling Stone have an excuse of anything for it writes leaving a way out for mindless readers to just be indoctrinated to false history.

Richard Nixon was not a Conservative. His domestic policies involved price controls and other nonsense. He was a liberal. His chief whacker was Henry Kissinger, king of liberal Rockefeller world globalists.........his prize was handing over South Vietnam to the communist butchers of North Vietnam.
I will add that Nixon's only Conservative act was in Adm. Thomas Moore finally being allowed to bomb the hell out of North Vietnam which put the fear of the B 52 god into them.....and Nixon only did that when he ran out of all options.

To equate though a communist with Hillary to Nixon's liberal agenda is nonsense. Hillary Clinton is not a pea to the garden of Nixon's brilliance though on foreign policy manueverings. He had his liberal flaws, but he was a brilliant at understanding human games.
Nixon was the policy paper behind how to deal with the Soviet's which Ronald Reagan completed beyond Nixon.

Hillary is in the league of Robert Mugabe of Rhodesia........she is no Conservative or even liberal.

As far as Obama being a JFK, not a chance. JFK actually was a physical conservative. He tried to break the federal reserve by printing US Dollars. I do not know if a Bay of Pigs fascist shot Kennedy, if it was the South Vietnamese hiring a French CIA assassin or what, but Kennedy was quite adept at pulling the trigger and Obama is just another amoral leftist rising to the tide of a wave about to wash out.
Sure they both wrote fake books, but I never saw Obama getting his PT 109 blown up on being a poor naval commander.

Obama is cartel generated. JFK was criminal mob money generated from old man Joe.

Their policies do not reflect at all the same Conservative political spectrum.

Rolling Stoned needs to understand the difference between global communism and liberalism.

 

*HIC IACET ARTORIVS REX QVONDAM REXQVE FVTVRVS

Lame Cherry, Nixon gave us the EPA

that's so special!

Do you think, if Nixon was in office (instead of JFK), would he have lowered taxes as much as JFK did?

iranian uranium; iranian uranium, iranian uranium..

Oh joy to the world, 19 more atomic power plants!

The people at Rolling Stone

The people at Rolling Stone are on crack.

"Hillary Clinton bothers me a lot. I realized the other day that her thoughts sound a
lot like Karl Marx. She hangs around a lot of Marxists. All her friends are
Marxists."
---Dick Armey

 

This Should Be a Lesson to Democrats

No matter how many polls you chase or newspaper editors you suck up to, there will always be an element of your party that is so far demented that no rational human being can please them.

Taibbi should try running for political office so he can find out how many people think his views are relevant.

Vote for "<insert name of conservative who stands up to the media>" for President in 2008.

delete

delete

Just goes to show

There are many liberal democrats that are so far to the left, that Karl Marx would seem to be a moderate when compared to them.
Any one who tries to posit that Hillary Clinton or Barrack Obama are conservatives would also try and get away with saying that the sky was really red and the Sun orbited the Moon.

 

The day that "politician" became a career choice is the day we started losing the Republic. Let's get it back! Alan Keyes '08.

superficial yes....conservative never

who ever would think hillary is conservative, oh yeah keep telling a lie over and over to the stooopid masses.

psst mccain is conservative too. ?

lunaticcringeradio

I just laugh every time I

I just laugh every time I see one of those BDS headlines on the cover of this magazine. I can't believe I actually subscribed to it back in the late 80s, early 90s. Well, it was better for entertainment news (and P.J. O'Rourke) back then.

Ran an anagram test for "Rolling Stone." My favorite:

 "LENIN SLOG ROT" 

in a close second:

"LEON GRIN LOST"

*****

"People only insist that a debate stop when they are afraid of what might be learned if it continues." - George Will 

How Left Can You Get?

I guess, unless you're a hard core Stalinist, you can't possibly be Leftist enough for the Rolling Stoned....

BTW isn't that a bit hypocritical of them, seeing as how they are a capitalist enterprize???

Well who is Taibbi and

Well who is Taibbi and Rolling Stone wanting for their Prez?

....Kucinich?

"Well who is Taibbi and

"Well who is Taibbi and Rolling Stone wanting for their Prez? "

I'll bet they want Charlie Watts, since  he is the most flamboyant member, and he seems to do the most talking for the band.