Rudy Attacks Hillary

It’s a good ad.

In the first place, it saddles Hillary with her record of supporting the Iraq War. Like John Kerry who “voted for the 85 billion dollars before he voted against it,” Hillary has done a flip-flop.

In the second place, it takes the side of General Petraeus against a smear from MoveOn.org.

While President Bush’s approval rating is in the tank, and the rating of Congress is even lower, public respect for the military is relatively high. So attacking a soldier isn’t good politics. At least not good general election politics.

(Of course it’s fine with the leftists among Democratic activists.)

How are the Democrats going to deal with ads like this? They have no good options.

They can, of course, claim that they were “lied to” by the Bush Administration.

The problem with this is that it makes Bush, whom they like to portray as a dolt, into a masterful deceiver. The Democrats would be admitting, in effect, that they were suckered. Between a successful deceiver, and somebody capable of being deceived, the American people eould probably prefer the former.

Of course, the Republicans can also pull out that footage of Bill Clinton (who until January 2001 had the same access to intelligence that Bush has now) saying that Saddam is seeking weapons of mass destruction, and will certainly use them.

Likewise with Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

One final thing for Rudy. As a pro-abortion and pro-gay agenda candidate, Republican social conservatives naturally have a problem with him.

But if Rudy can make the issue “Rudy vs. Hillary” virtually all Republicans will tend to rally around the former New York mayor.

It’s way better politics, indeed better Republican primary politics, to attack Hillary rather than attack his Republican rivals.