Divide and Conquer

Newsmax posted a story recently about how Bill Clinton is doing a little campaigning for John McCain these days:

For the second time in a week, Bill Clinton offered high praise for Republican presidential nominee John McCain — the candidate who could end up squaring off against Clinton’s wife Hillary.

At a stop in rural Pennsylvania on Thursday, Bill told the gathering that McCain is a “moderate” who “has given all you can give for this country without dying for it.”

He said McCain is on the right side in opposing the torture of enemy combatants and on the global warming issue, which “just about crosses the bridge for [Republicans].”

Clinton also told the audience that the race should not about the past, but about who is going to do more for the country in the future, ABC News reported. That person, he said, is Hillary.

One week ago Clinton expressed similar sentiments at a gathering in North Carolina, calling McCain a war hero who had demonstrated his love for his country.

Clinton noted that McCain supported campaign finance reform and “he doesn’t think global warming is a myth … so it is not going to be all that easy to beat him.”

At that same campaign stop, Clinton angered the Barack Obama campaign by saying that McCain and Hillary share a love of America — without mentioning Obama.

“I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country,” he said.

“And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics.”

By not mentioning Obama, he suggested to some observers that he believes Obama’s patriotism is lacking.

Right now, it looks like his allegiance stands with Hilary first, John McCain second. His allegiance to the Democratic Party is either off in the distance, or non-existent.

Remember, this is the Bill Clinton who passed NAFTA and the TelComm act of 1993 - both extremely right-wing in nature. This is also the same Bill Clinton who said in an interview a few years ago (I'm paraphrasing here), "Most of my career, I haven't had much money, and it's very nice at this point in my life to have some." Given his capitulation to the moneyed right-wingers during his term, I'm not surprised that Bill has enjoyed some payback from the wealthy people he helped with his policies.

It begs the question: how far would Bill Clinton go for a little more wealth and prestige? Would he sell out his own party? Or could there be a larger, more nefarious strategy?

John McCain is struggling to win the support of hard-core right-wing Republicons. But he has until November to build his campaign, unchallenged by fellow GOP members. Meanwhile, and inexplicably, the Clinton-Obama war continues, and with each day, it chips away a little more at the Democratic Party. Voters get more disillusioned as Clinton's rhetoric gets nastier. Obama and Clinton are spending to defeat each other, using campaign funds that would be better spent to educate the country as to McCain's unsuitability for the nation's highest office.

I can understand Bill Clinton taking pot shots at Obama to help his wife, but why does he need to build up McCain at the same time? My hypothesis is that the Clintons are basically doing the same thing Rush Limbaugh is doing.

As you'll recall Limbaugh has launched what he calls Operation Chaos, which calls on Republican voters to switch sides and vote for Clinton during the primary so that Obama can't gain a reasonable lead. The greater strategy is to keep Dems divided all the way into the convention in order to give McCain a greater chance to win.

Let's face it: though Obama doesn't have the necessary lead that would stop Hilary's campaign in its tracks, there's no way that she can get the delgates she needs to win the nomination. Yet she just declared that "she likes a long movie" – in other words, she's gonna drag this thing out to the bitter end. And by doing so, the big loser is the Democratic Party.

This prolonged battle, combined with the both Clintons' praise of McCain over Obama, have me seriously considering that their loyalty probably lie with the GOP and the Corporatocracy, not with the Democrats or the American people.