“President Bush’s comparison of any Democrat to Nazi appeasers is offensive and outrageous on the face of it, especially in light of his failures in foreign policy,” Clinton said. “This is the kind of statement that has no place in any presidential address.”
If this signifies a new (non-destructive) direction for the Democratic race—and if she can turn all of her attacks toward Bush and McCain—well then I might be changing my position on it and possibly on the idea of an Obama-Clinton ticket.
In a speech to Israel's Knesset, Bush said: "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.
"We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
Keep it up George, because the American people aren't buying your bullshit anymore. Every time you pull a stunt like this, your party comes that much closer to losing the White House.
update:
McCain and Lieberman jump in.
"It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel's independence to launch a false political attack," Obama said in the statement his aides distributed. "George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the president's extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel."
While McCain has not addressed the abortion platform since becoming the presumed Republican nominee, he reaffirmed his desire to change the GOP's official abortion stance following a multicandidate forum that took place in Des Moines, Iowa, April 14, 2007.
Despite McCain's support for changing the platform in 2000 and 2007, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., the co-chairman of McCain's Justice Advisory Committee, significantly downplays the possibility that McCain would revise the party's call for a nationwide constitutional ban on abortion with no exceptions.
"I don't think that's going to happen. I think you're going to see a platform process that is going to maintain that plank," said Brownback, a leading abortion rights opponent who endorsed McCain after ending his own White House bid.
...
"If he doesn't change the platform, then he's being the same kind of hypocrite that he accused Bush of being in 2000," said Jennifer Blei Stockman, the co-chairwoman of Republican Majority for Choice. "To not accept abortion in cases of rape and incest, give me a break. That's sick. That's inhumane."
"And the life of the mother?" she added. "These are things that we can't even put our arms around because they are so inhumane."
...
Stockman said that McCain's team is ignoring his previous commitments on this issue and is intentionally downplaying his clout.
"If McCain chooses not to revise the platform, I think he will say it's 'the system' and he will try to distance himself from it," said Stockman. "But he absolutely has the power to change it."
"Many people think of him as a moderate," she said. "But when it comes out that he doesn't want to change this extreme, right-wing Republican platform, the word 'moderate' is going to disappear from any description of McCain."
