Spin Cycle

In the 1990s, when the Clintons were under regular attack from the right, they had no greater or less principled antagonists than the conservative American Spectator magazine, and Richard Mellon Scaife, a right wing Pittsburgh millionaire of conspiratorial bent.

They bankrolled operatives who called themselves "investigative journalists," coddled anyone in Arkansas who would allege something about Bill and Hillary, and fanned the flames of everything from Troopergate to Vince Foster murder theories. They would have been hubs in any social network of the "vast right-wing conspiracy" that Hillary complained about.

Times, apparently, have changed. Yesterday, as Hillary decided to break silence on Jeremiah Wright and scratch the scab of that race-tinged controversy a bit by saying she would never have such a pastor, her chosen forum was the ed board of Scaife's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Indeed, her old tormentor was sitting right next to her as she delivered some calculated red meat. See picture, left

At around the same time, one of her campaign press secretaries, Phil Singer, was apparently e-mailing around copies of an article from the other old tormentor, the Spectator, trying to make a guilt-by-association case that suggests Obama is an anti-Semite because he has a military advisor who has dared to assert that the power of the Jewish vote in America skews policy toward Israel.

Does it mean anything that she now finds herself relying on redoubts of the right for succor? It is said that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Apparently to defeat Obama, who on the surface agrees with her on most matters of policy and principle, she is willing to turn to places that almost uniformly disagree with her on such matters.

But if you're looking for allies who will make unprincipled charges of anti-Semitism and keep alive a racial hot-button that will drive white voters nuts, instead of letting your opponent's rise-above-it speech take hold, this, apparently, is where you end up going.