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Hillary Scandal obscures her message while GOP talks substance
Hillary Clinton ran into a bombardment of bruising questions about her email issues on Tuesday from Ed Henry of Fox News, refusing to say whether she had attempted to wipe her email clean.
Clinton’s latest evasion ensures the scandal surrounding the private server she used for her State Department emails will continue to dominate coverage of her campaign.
Ask yourself: What is Hillary Clinton promoting? What are her policies? What is the Democrats’ agenda for 2016?
If you don’t know, it’s because the focus on Hillary’s server, which is now in the hands of the FBI, has eclipsed the Democratic message machine, forcing the party’s top candidate into a defensive crouch and prompting many even in the mainstream media to pounce on the story.
Hillary suggested there was no classified information contained in those emails; there was. She said there was just one account; there were more.
During Clinton’s face-off Tuesday with Henry, he bluntly asked her, “The FBI believes you tried to wipe the entire server. Did you try to wipe the entire — so that there would be no emails, no personal or no official?”
“Well, my personal e-mails are my personal business, right?” Hillary responded, dodging the question.
Then she she invoked the ‘grandma defense,’ trying to pretend she was technologically illiterate.
“Did you wipe the server?” Henry demanded.
“What, like with a cloth or something?” Hillary joked. “I don’t know how it works digitally at all.”
Clinton also did what the Clintons have done for years: Blame the whole thing on “politics.”
“Now I’m in their crosshairs again,” the former secretary of state said yesterday. “It’s not about Benghazi. You know what? It’s not about emails or servers, either. It’s about politics.”
She went on, “Here is what I won’t do: I won’t get down in the mud with them. I won’t play politics with national security or dishonor the memory of those who we lost.”
Some Democratic operatives are fuming that Clinton only just now has given up the server. She failed to follow the classic advice offered by all crisis public relations managers: Get the information out early so the story goes away.
Instead, information has been dripping out, ensuring that the Democrats’ banner issue for weeks to come will be Hillary’s ethical challenges. The war on women, the income gap, and whatever else Democrats want to peddle with have to wait.
Republicans have their controversies, but with the attention-drawing magic of businessman Donald Trump driving the media coverage, the GOP candidates are tackling serious, important issues such as education, immigration reform, and replacing Obamacare. They’ve given voters the early impression that Republicans are the party of substance and change.
The Democrats, meantime, have an email server problem. And yet another Clinton problem.
This article first appeared on LifeZette.
Source: http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2015/08/19/hillary-scandal-obscures-message-gop-talks-substance/
