Blast from the past: Gennifer Flowers puts her recorded conversations with Bubba up for bid
Norm Clarke reports:
Gennifer Flowers is putting the tapes of her recorded conversations with Bill Clinton during their 12-year affair on the auction block, Vegas Confidential learned Monday.
Flowers, who came forward during Clinton’s 1992 Presidential election campaign with details of the relationship, said she decided to part with the tapes after renewed interest surfaced. She was offered $5 million by a Japanese collector in the 1990s, she said.
Asked about the timing of her announcement coming out as Hillary Clinton continues to slide in her presidential bid, “I don’t need to hurt Hillary. She is doing a fine job of that herself, along with her idiot husband. Karma is an interesting thing. If these two don’t get elected, and they are a team, it will be karma coming back to visit them. It’s about time.”
When President Clinton denied the relationship during his presidential campaign, Flowers called a press conference played what she said were secretly recorded phone conversations.
“These are the tapes I brought forth as proof,” she said.
Flowers, who lives in Las Vegas, sued Hillary Rodham Clinton, George Stephanopoulos, James Carville and other, accusing them of orchestrating a campaign to discredit her. Carville and Stephanopolous claimed Flowers doctored the tapes.
Will this be a distraction for La Clinton at tonight’s Cleveland debate, or will it make her attacks on Obama even sharper?
Meanwhile, at Camp Hillary:
After struggling for months to dent Senator Barack Obama’s candidacy, the campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is now unleashing what one Clinton aide called a “kitchen sink” fusillade against Mr. Obama, pursuing five lines of attack since Saturday in hopes of stopping his political momentum.
The effort underscores not only Mrs. Clinton’s recognition that the next round of primaries — in Ohio and Texas on March 4 — are must-win contests for her. It also reflects her advisers’ belief that they can persuade many undecided voters to embrace her at the last minute by finally drawing sharply worded, attention-grabbing contrasts with Mr. Obama.
After denouncing Mr. Obama over the weekend for an anti-Clinton flier about the Nafta trade treaty, and then sarcastically portraying his message of hope Sunday as naïve, Mrs. Clinton delivered a blistering speech on Monday that compared Mr. Obama’s lack of foreign policy experience to that of the candidate George W. Bush.
“We’ve seen the tragic result of having a president who had neither the experience nor the wisdom to manage our foreign policy and safeguard our national security” Mrs. Clinton said in a speech on foreign policy at George Washington University. “We can’t let that happen again.”
With a crucial debate on Tuesday night in Ohio, both Mrs. Clinton’s advisers and independent political analysts said that, by going negative against Mr. Obama at a time when polls in Texas and Ohio show a tightening race, Mrs. Clinton risked alienating voters. Mrs. Clinton has always been more popular with voters when she appeared sympathetic and a fighter; her hard-edged instinct for negative politics has usually turned off the public.
“There’s a general rule in politics: A legitimate distinction which could be effective when drawn early in the campaign often backfires and could seem desperate when it happens in the final hours of a campaign” said Steve McMahon, a Democratic strategist working for neither candidate.
In Mrs. Clinton’s speech Monday, she also portrayed herself as “tested and ready” to be commander in chief, while accusing Mr. Obama of believing “that mediation and meetings without preconditions will solve some of the world’s most intractable problems.” Mr. Obama has said he would go further than Mrs. Clinton to meet with leaders of hostile nations, but he has also said he would prepare for those meetings carefully and would not be blind to the leaders’ motives.
In other developments, the finger-pointing has started:
Communications chief Howard Wolfson — echoing a strong belief of the Clintons themselves — blamed the news media Monday for allegedly tossing bouquets to Obama whenever he criticizes Clinton but writing that she is throwing low blows whenever she draws contrasts with him.
Top aides also are frustrated over the handling of a media uproar Monday regarding a photograph of Obama in traditional African dress during a visit to Kenya. It appeared splashed on the Drudge Report with the accusation that it was “circulated” by “Clinton staffers” over the weekend.
The debate over whether to deny responsibility or simply decline comment consumed the campaign at a moment when its remaining days to trip Obama’s sprint to the nomination are in single digits.
Some Clintonites are disappointed with the candidate herself. Lines that were meant to be funny or show fighting spirit — “change you can Xerox” or “Shame on you, Barack Obama” — instead came off as peevish.
Her advisers acknowledge wearily that they have not cracked the code for deflating Obama. One of her slogans, “Solutions for America” is meant to imply her opponent offers only empty rhetoric, while she would know what to do. But the campaign recognizes that has not always gotten through.
The fun never stops …