Edwards's Scissor Hands and Clinton's 5 P's

John Edwards released a statement today about Hillary Clinton's newest slogan (video):

"The war in Iraq isn’t even history yet, but the Bush Administration is repeating the march to war with Iran – and they’re getting help from a person who should know a lot better – Senator Clinton.

"On Saturday at the Iowa Jefferson Jackson dinner, Senator Clinton unveiled her new campaign slogan to ‘turn up the heat’ on the Republicans.

"Well, somebody will have to tell me how you ‘turn up the heat’ by voting with Bush, Cheney and the neocons on their path to war with Iran. Because I don't believe that's turning up the heat – I think that's giving them exactly what they want.

"Senator Clinton had her chance to stand up and she chose not to use it. Our nation needs leaders who have the strength and backbone to fight the president on his march to war with Iran – not quicken the pace."

This quote highlights number 5 of Clinton's 5 P's. The Politics of Pretend. Pretend to be a progressive. Pretend to be a leader. Pretend to stand up to the Republicans. Pretend Kyl-Lieberman is all about diplomacy.

Clinton's 5 P's:

Parsing
Plants
Penn
Politics-as-usual
Pretend

On September 26, 2007, Hillary Clinton voted with the majority of the Senate to pass the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which declares the Iranian National Guard a terrorist organization. Senator Jim Webb called the amendement "Dick Cheney's fondest pipe dream."

You may remember Mike Gravel asking Clinton about it in the debate that took place on the same date as her vote.

She went on to defend her vote as putting some teeth in diplomacy.

Clinton: My understanding of the Revolutionary Guard in Iran is that it is promoting terrorism.  It is manufacturing weapons that are used against our troops in Iraq.  It is certainly the main agent of support for Hezbollah, Hamas and others.

And in what we voted for today, we will have an opportunity to designate it as a terrorist organization which gives us the options to be able to impose sanctions on the primary leaders to try to begin to put some teeth into all this talk about dealing with Iran.

We wouldn't be where we are today if the Bush administration hadn't outsourced our diplomacy with respect to Iran and ignored Iran and called it part of the axis of evil.  Now we've got to make up for lost time and lost ground...

In the same debate, John Edwards also criticized Clinton for her vote.

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