Payback Is A Hound Dog By Rosslyn Smith

 

Payback Is a Hound Dog by Rosslyn Smith over at American Thinker

 

Some are trying to pass off Bill Clinton's seemingly pro-Romney comments on the campaign trail as a sign the 65 year old former president is is rusty and indeed that he might even be getting a bit senile.  (Funny how they never say that about the 87 year old Carter.)  Stephen Green at PJ Media isn't buying it.  The inventor of drunk blogging seems to be  enjoying his beloved adult beverages as he watches Clinton do to Obama what he did to Republicans for eight years.

When your enemy is angry, irritate him.
-Sun Tzu

There are differing versions, even different attributions, of that dictum, probably because of its timeless truth. An angry enemy makes mistakes. An annoyed and angry enemy will flip out. And nobody was better at annoying the angry than Bill Clinton -- even if he had to first make them angry himself. While president, Clinton thrived on making conservatives and Republicans angry. Red-faced, spittle-covered mad. Clinton, written off for dead at the end of '94, coasted to reelection just two years later, thanks in no small part to his ability to irritate the Right.

I watched him do it to the GOP -- to me! -- almost daily for eight years. I knew exactly what he was doing, and why. And yet I still fell for it. Every time. Almost all of us did. You gotta bow to the master.

You can imagine then that the West Wing must be reeling this week, after a series of irritating little shivs Clinton slid into their backs over the last few days.

So why Clinton is behaving this way?  Green and others offer overlapping reasons.  I think one is certainly professional pride.  Clinton was the first Democrat president to be reelected in 52 years.  Clinton also spent the 1980s and 90s trying to keep the Democrats a center left party that could appeal to the small town populists found in his native Arkansas, Louisiana and across Appalachia, as well as to the urban interest groups.

While many voters didn't like Clinton's personal habits, his strategy of triangulation on key issues helped convince many middle of the road voters that it was again safe to elect a Democrat president.  In 2006 the Democrats reversed 12 years of Republican control of Congress largely by recruiting Congressional candidates who appealed to suburban and small town values that iconic Clinton era  group, the Democratic Leadership Council, supported.

Obama is a creature of the urban far left, that strange brew of academics, image makers and the urban underclasses that mostly hold suburban and small town values in contempt.   Not only was Obama to the left of Clinton when he was elected, unlike Clinton, Obama has not shifted to the center in respond to a tsunami of signals that the electorate is unhappy with how he is governing.  The Permanent Democrat majority the Obama forces bragged about shortly after his inauguration didn't survive the backlash from the Stimulus Bill and the passage of Obama-care. The Democratic Leadership Council died with it.    Clinton worked hard to help build that majority and has to loath how it quickly and amateurishly it is being squandered.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/06/payback_is_a_hound_dog.html#ixzz1xCpfrqDz