Until now the Pennsylvania primary contest has been free of negative ads, but today Hillary put up a radio spot criticizing Obama by name for airing a TV ad that she considers misleading. It being the Clinton campaign, they engage in some misleading of their own while complaining about Obama.
It's actually pretty rich:
The Obama ad, -- his version of the well-heeled-populist stance both candidates adopt when wooing blue-collar votes -- says he'll take onBig Oil over energy prices: "I don't take money from oil companies or Washington lobbyists, and I won't let them block change any more."
Here's the Clinton radio script:
"In his TV ads, Barack Obama sounds like he'll take on the oil companies. 'I don't take money from oil companies.' What he doesn’t tell you is that 'no candidate does….they can't,' according to the Annenberg Center’s Factcheck.org...It's been against the law for companies to donate to candidates for a hundred years.
"Listen to Barack Obama some more. 'Now Exxon's making forty billion dollars a year and we're paying three fifty for gas.' Obama also doesn't mention that he voted for the Bush Cheney energy bill. It was called a piñata of perks and the best energy bill corporations could buy. Hillary Clinton voted against that bill.
"She’s the one who will make the oil companies pay to set up a new strategic energy fund that will cut our dependence on foreign oil, invest in new clean energy, and create five million new jobs. It's time for president who takes on the oil companies in real life, not just on TV. Hillary Clinton."
Her ad correctly notes that Annenberg's factcheck.org found Obama's claim was misleading. But here's something Hillary's ad doesn't tell you:
The very same group she cites to discredit Obama, Factcheck.org, has three different times concluded that Hillary was misleading in her central claim of the ad -- that Obama voted for a giveaway in the Bush-Cheney energy bill. Three times.
On Jan 16: "Clinton once again painted a false picture of what the measure contained. She continued to repeat her misleading claim that it had 'enormous giveaways to the oil and gas industries,' when in fact it resulted in a net increase in taxes on oil and gas companies This is the third time we've pointed out Clinton's distortion of this legislation. She is continuing a bogus line of attack that we debunked when Democrats deployed it widely in the 2006 congressional elections."
It's a special kind of chutzpah that allows you to engage in a distortion while using the very same group that has scolded you as some kind of arbiter of truth -- when it comes to the other guy! And, on top of that, here's something else Hillary's ad doesn't tell you:
Obama doesn't take money from oil company PACs -- which he could do legally -- and, unlike Hillary, doesn't take money from oil lobbyists or any other lobbyists. He does take money from oil company employees -- $213,000.
But guess who takes more? Hillary. $306,000.