Not the first time Drudge attempted a smear like this… certainly not the first time he was wrong. Matt Drudge is bottom-feeding scum in a Walt Winchell costume.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Errors

Michelle Obama should have lunch with Alexandra Polier and get the low-down on how to track down Drudge and put the screws to the libelous P.O.S.

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/politics/national/features/9221/

Agnostick
agnostick@excite.com
http://www.uscentrist.org
http://www.americanplan.org

1) Drudge tied it to the Clinton campaign which means he or one of his staff members got it from there. You can call them liars if you want, but most insiders know that this type of oppo research is handled through surrogates all the time. Also, there’s no way Drudge is going to name their anonymous sources. Sure, they do get some things wrong, but for the most part he has the trust of the politico because he can be reliably counted on to push their dirt when they send it to him. So don’t be naive to think that the Clinton camp isn’t behind this. The record proves that Drudge is right more often than not on this.

2) “Circulating” means it’s making the rounds through the back channel emails of the politicos and it landed on Drudge’s doorstep. That’s it. Nowhere in Drudge’s report does it come anywhere close to suggesting that Hillary’s camp was spreading this around Texas and Ohio. Nor is their any suggesting that this is one staffer emailing it to another staffer. Both are speculation on your part.

3) Umm, folks, have we not been paying attention? Yes, the insinuation is that Obama is a secret Muslim. That along with the frustration over the media makes this email what it is, a cheap smear.

To mw’s point about this dissuading Obama supporters, you can’t credibly say it won’t pull a few %s away from him, and grab a majority of the % of the undecideds. That’s the point to smears like this.

As far as stupidity goes, you are talking about the same campaign that put a press release about Obama’s kindergarten papers, right? The same campaign that didn’t rebuke Robert Johnson when he suggested that Obama was taking drugs when Bill and Hillary were helping people and then lied about it? The same campaign that talked openly about his drug use on political pundit shows and was called out on that by Joe Trippi, Edwards’ campaign manager? The same campaign who has had a history with other staffers sending out Obama Muslim smears?

Sorry mw, but Hillary’s credibility is shot with this blogger. Her people have been consistently dumb about their attacks so something clumsy like this wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

Also, and this is for both of you…show me something beyond Chris Matthew’s inane comments that demonstrate how unfair the media has been to Hillary. Please. Let’s get some credible arguments going instead of “Oh, they’ve been SOOO unfair.” That is just a meme at this point, and I haven’t seen anything besides people saying it to demonstrate it’s even plausibly true.

I’ll be waiting. :-)

When I first saw this story, I thought it odd. I find it difficult to believe that anyone would deliberately promote this picture thinking it would have any effect on support for Obama. But people keep forwarding that stupid “Obama is a secret Muslim” e-mail - so who knows?

At some point, I think you have to give the Clinton campaign at least some credit for understanding that this would create much more damage for them than any possible gain they could get. Nobody in the Clinton campaign leadership could be that stupid to think this would help. If it turns out that this really came from a Clinton staffer, I have to believe that it was without knowledge of the campaign leadership itself. It just makes no sense. I mean, for petes sake - does anyone know an Obama supporter that would be dissuaded by this picture? Why would we think the Clinton campaign, with all their research resources, would think differently?