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Posted
Monday, November 26, 2007 6:08 PM
| By
Christopher Beam
They say the Democratic candidates’ gloves came off at the Philadelphia debate on
Oct. 30, when Obama and Edwards “piled on” Hillary. If that’s true, then the
latest flurry of belligerent e-mails suggests the gloves have now been
shredded, burned, pulverized, and blasted out of a cannon into the mighty Mississippi.
First there was this
little dust-up over Barack Obama’s childhood abroad amounts to foreign
policy experience. Then today, after the Washington
Post revealed
that Obama’s PAC has given a large chunk of its money to officials in early
states, Clinton’s camp released a list of
questions—and good ones, too—asking for more information about why Obama’s organization
gave to these officials and who knew about it.
Obama’s people responded with a line that sounds all too
Clintonesque: “Whatever happened to the confident
frontrunner who said she wouldn’t attack other Democrats just two weeks ago?” You
half expect them to accuse her of abandoning the politics of hope. Team Clinton shot back that
Obama’s “failure to deny that it committed campaign finance violations speaks
volumes.”
It’s true, the Obama camp doesn’t
quite deny that the donations are shady—it only insists that they were
disclosed (which doesn’t necessarily make them legal). Of course, Obama’s not
alone. The Post story suggests that conveniently
timed donations like these are common enough, but that the FEC doesn’t usually
crack down on the practice. But if Clinton or someone else could quietly get
the commission to intervene—now that might actually ruffle a few feathers.
If this is what the
post-Thanksgiving sprint is going to look like, they'll need to start selling Orville Redenbacher's in bulk.
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