Great job Hillary, say gleeful Republicans
Agence France-Presse
First Posted 04:48:00 08/28/2008
DENVER -- Republicans Wednesday crowed with delight at Hillary Clinton's show-stopping convention speech, claiming she had helped to build their case against Democrat White House hopeful Barack Obama.
Commentators seized on the fact that in a speech full of drama, tears and laughter in which Clinton repeatedly urged her supporters to unite to elect Obama president, she never once said he was ready to lead.
"I think she gave a very good speech from her point of view and our point of view, but not necessarily for Barack Obama's point of view," former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani told Fox News.
"She never really answered the key question, is he prepared to be president? Which is the issue she put out there, rather dramatically, during the primaries."
Even as the last cheers were still echoing through the vast Denver convention center, the campaign of Republican presidential hopeful John McCain swiftly tore Clinton's speech to shreds late Tuesday.
"Senator Clinton ran her presidential campaign making clear that Barack Obama is not prepared to lead as commander in chief," Tucker Bounds, spokesman for Obama's Republican rival John McCain, said in a statement.
"Nowhere tonight did she alter that assessment. Nowhere tonight did she say that Barack Obama is ready to lead. Millions of Hillary Clinton supporters and millions of Americans remain concerned about whether Barack Obama is ready to be president."
The former first lady's speech held the packed center spellbound, but did not sound like she planned to bow out of politics any time soon.
Instead, passed over by Barack Obama in his search for a running mate two months after her own campaign folded, Senator Clinton wrote her own history of her campaign, and seemed to be spotlighting her future role.
"This is a fight for the future. And it's a fight we must win," Clinton said, in comments about November's election, but which might have referred to her own political hopes.
Influential commentator Michael Barone writing in U.S. News magazine said the speech put everyone on notice that Clinton could indeed make another historic tilt at the White House in 2012.
The speech was "good, but not quite very good, for Barack Obama in 2008. Even better, if things should turn out like they might, for Hillary Clinton in 2012," he wrote.
"What was missing was much in the way of description of Barack Obama. What kind of man is he? One who supports the same positions she does," he asked.
"Has she looked deep into his heart and found something worthy? No evidence here that she had. Would he be a good commander-in-chief? Not a word on that, as the McCain campaign quickly and gleefully noted."
And Rush Limbaugh, the high priest of conservative talk radio, told Fox News that the adoration of Clinton late Tuesday was "the first time since 1976 that a convention has been more excited about a loser than a winner."
Despite calling on her millions of disappointed fans to vote Obama, Clinton "de-linked herself from him," Limbaugh argued.
"Those two both need for Obama to lose and they're going to do whatever they can after they leave Denver to see that that happens," he argued.
|
