Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday concluded what had been a quiet week of small-town stops by flinging populist barbs at one of her favorite targets — the Republican-controlled Congress — and hinting at the contours of a campaign that will soon kick into a higher gear.
"It seems as though they would rather threaten the livelihoods" of working people than "stand up to the tea party and talk radio," Clinton said here at Smuttynose Brewing Co. on her second campaign trip to New Hampshire….
The move is … part of the former secretary of state’s strategy of tying the policies of the congressional GOP, which is deeply unpopular, to the field of Republican presidential contenders. By insisting the two are inextricably linked, her hope is to mount a case against the entire party, rather than a specific candidate.
This is precisely the right message at precisely the right moment, both of which are serviceable for months to come. Outside of Paul on foreign policy and Huckabee on entitlements, the GOP's presidential candidates and their congressional lessers are pretty much an undifferentiated bunch of prehensile automatons pandering to the same dying, neanderthal base. Even Bush, who knows better, can't escape the atavistic pull of a willing ignorance that feeds the GOP Congress.
An attack on one is an attack on all, as it should be. Democrats might as well be upfront and aggressive about it. Every good attorney knows that getting under the skin of a testifying witness is likely to provoke the witness into saying something incredibly injudicious — and no one is easier to provoke than tea partiers and talk-radio goons. So poke 'em and poke 'em relentlessly. Then sit back and watch them self-immolate — frying their allied politicos in a defensive mode and alienating the moderates.