Team Hillary Reveals Lame Plan to Recover from her Email Scandal By Thomas Lifson
Hillary Clinton evidently thinks she can tough her way out of her email server problems by blaming others and deflecting attention, strategies she is already employing to no useful effect. Her latest gambit was revealed in an interview with friendly journalists at the Huffington Post. Sam Stein writes:
To get in front of these headlines, the Clinton campaign is plotting a three-pronged pushback strategy. The first, described by communications director Jennifer Palmieri in an interview with The Huffington Post, is an end-of-summer effort to educate the public on the classification process for national security material. The second, coming when Congress returns from recess, is to aggressively pivot to policy announcements, from economic and women’s issues to President Barack Obama’s Iran deal, which will receive a vote in September. The last is to “go on offense” on Clinton’s record as secretary of state, which the campaign sees as the ultimate target of her Republican critics.
As Chuck Ross points out in The Daily Caller:
…none of the pieces of that multi-part pushback plan…appear to involve the Democrat actually explaining why she used a private server, when she wiped it clean, and why she did so.
Of course not, for that would bring more grilling from the media, which have not been willing to accept the evasions and lies she has been offering. Unlike her other scandals, this time around there are forces on the left, armed with sympathetic media, that want to hold her to account. She’s never had to face the kind of cross-examination any Republican would, and she’s not very good at it. So just pretend that the real problem is over-classification at the State Department – a problem so severe that she did nothing at all about it in the four years she ran the State Department. This seems like an admission of incompetence, if she really wants to press that line.
As for policy announcements: that college loan plan really worked, didn’t it? And that record she built as secretary? How’s that reset with Russia going? How about Libya? Her term was a disaster, and her team’s expressed belief that they can make it into a selling point is delusional.
The last point the staff made to HuffPo is really grasping at straws:
In attempting to soothe jittery Democrats, aides have begun highlighting Oct. 22 as a moment that could bring clarity — if not some finality — to the email story. Clinton will head to Capitol Hill that day for testimony before the House committee investigating the 2011 consulate attack in Benghazi. And the presumption that she’ll do well under questioning is matched only by the conviction that House Republicans will grow over-eager under the camera lights.
“It will be the best day of the campaign,” said Steve Elmendorf, a longtime Democratic operative, lobbyist and Clinton confidante. “They will overreach. That’s what they do.”
Maybe. You can’t rule out stupidity from the committee, but keep in mind that this is a select committee, focused on getting to the bottom of Benghazi. Chairman Trey Gowdy is an experienced prosecutor, and he has reportedly been preparing the committee extensively for the big day. Grandstanding and overreaching are very much on the mind of the chair as he works with his members on their conduct.
Hillary will be under oath. And her press conferences ever since the U.N. lie-fest have been dismal failures. Lotsa luck, Hillary. I am really looking forward to a bitter fight to the end.
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