NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Sunday, April 26, 2015, 9:03 PM
This is what you hear from those who support Hillary Clinton: You hear that this upcoming book, “Clinton Cash” by Peter Schweizer, suggesting that she handed out political favors while she was secretary of state like they were party favors as long as it helped raise a ton of dough for her husband’s foundation, is nothing more than a new right-wing conspiracy, against her and against her husband.
So now they don’t just come at her on Benghazi, and deleted emails. They come at her and say that a sitting secretary of state spent at least some of her time in that job acting like some old-time ward heeler. She can’t let this stand if she expects to be President.
If this book is nothing more than another smear by a member of the bullhorn right, nothing more than a hatchet job by a former flunky for the George W. Bush administration — and, boy, is that some job reference — then it isn’t Bill Clinton’s job to call out the author, nor a job for members of Hillary Clinton’s staff. If this is all a lie then she is the one who has to go right at Schweizer, whether she helps sell his book for him or not.
This isn’t about the risks of dignifying a smear by addressing it. We’re way past that, because of the coverage “Clinton Cash” is getting from legitimate media. This is about correcting the record about foreign money that has flowed into the Clinton Foundation, starting with the $2.35 million donated to the foundation by some rich Canadian mining entrepreneurs at the same time they were selling a uranium company to a state-owned Russian nuclear energy company.
It was a deal, by the way, on which the federal government, which includes the State Department, had to sign off. On top of that there was no disclosure about this money from Bill Clinton’s foundation, which means the people in charge were negligent or sloppy or both, opening themselves to at least the suggestion from such as Schweizer that this was some backdoor shakedown.
"Clinton Cash" is more than an assault on Bill Clinton. It's an assault on Hillary Clinton and her candidacy. She needs to set the record straight.
There is no proof, from Schweizer or anybody else, that Secretary of State Clinton was involved in this deal that was finally approved in committee. Still: This early into the 2016 campaign — and before this book is even officially published — it is one more thing involving Bill and Hillary Clinton. As always, they look like the queen and king of things like this. It seems this has been going on with them since Bill told us he didn’t inhale.
This is a book that attacks not just her judgment, but her character. It won’t be the last attack of this kind, in a campaign that will eventually feel as elegant as political porn. Those who hate Hillary Clinton from the Republican Party, hacks or not, hate her the way they do President Obama. But she has to push back on this one, and sooner rather than later, before it becomes more of a thing than it already is.
She has to push back on this the way her opponent eight years ago — still Sen. Barack Obama then — did in Philadelphia when he gave the most memorable speech of the 2008 political season, one about race in America, and about his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. They were coming at Obama at the time about being a member of Wright’s church, as if things Wright had said in past sermons, about our government and about white America, were Obama’s beliefs.
“(Wright) contains within him the contradictions — the good and the bad — of the community he has served for so many years,” Obama said that day in March of ’08. “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother . . . a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
Back in 2008, Barack Obama fired back at critics with a memorable speech about race in America. Perhaps Hillary Clinton should do something similar.
“These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.”
No one, other than those who really do hate Hillary Clinton, is suggesting that Schweizer’s charges are gospel, or anything more than the gospel according to a guy from Breitbart News. Hillary Clinton still cannot let these accusations go unanswered. If mistakes were made by her husband’s foundation — and his obsessive and relentless fund-raising — say that. If she should have been paying closer attention to the dealings between the foundation and foreign governments, say that, too. Maybe this is the right time for her own Wright speech.
This book isn’t merely an assault on her husband. It is an assault on her, and her candidacy. Her husband isn’t the one running for President. She is. If these charges are false, stand up and say that now.
Source: Top Stories - Google News - http://ift.tt/1Jubsw0
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