When RNC Chairman Reince Presibus told me on air Wednesday that his team was getting ready for Hillary, the "news" went viral on the left in hurry.
(The complete transcript of my chat with the chairman is here, including my continuing pitch for Cleveland as the site of the 2016 RNC Convo.)
Talking Points Memo and Politico added coverage. Others will follow through the day.
There should be no surprise here, though of course it is great to be the first show on which the chairman acknowledged the obvious. Priebus and his team have learned from Team Obama that once you know whom the other side is going to nominate, hone and and define that candidate. Don't wait for Labor Day 2016 to run negative ads about Hillary. Run them now. Start as soon as you can. That means now.
That's what Axelrod, Stephanie Cutter et al did vis-a-vis Mitt Romney from early 2012 forward. And it worked, as Collision 2012 by the Washington Post's Dan Balz and The Center Holds Bloomberg's Jonathan Alter and others confirm. (My interview with Balz is here; with Alter here.)
The message of those ads is simple: Hillary failed at State, was a non-entity in the Senate, and is the grandmother of Obamacare.
How badly did she fail at State? The dread record of her time as captain of that ship cotninues to accumulate, but play a game with your lefty friends. Ask them what Hillary accomplished as Secretary of State in her four years there.
That's what I have been doing with MSMers: Read the NYT's Mark Leibovich's ringing defense of Hill's State years...or Politico's Maggie Haberman's. (Pete Dominick flunked the "Hillary for $100" Double Jeopardy as well.)
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The "Hillary as Obamacare's grandmother" got its start here, and the American Spectator's Jeff Lord has adopted it. Long may it live and spread. It has, as Kissinger would say, the additional advantage of being true.
The GOP doesn't want to fight the last war, but it does want to lear from it, and Chairman Priebus is doing exactly that, by planning on moving up the 2016 Convention (hopefully to the city with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame), compressing the debate and primary schedule, and of course by beginning a forceful argument against Hillary right now.
The Super Pacs should add in their voices and their dollars but with the same message: She hasn't been competent. In fact, in every thing she has led, she has failed.
Every day. On every platform. And, oh yes, on Spanish television and radio.
Hillary is going to be the Democratic nominee in 2016. Reince Priebus knows it. I know it. You know it. The MSM should begin covering her that way, and should begin to look hard at her dismal record at State, and that "legacy" reporting isn't going to be pretty --if it ever happens.
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