Hillary Clinton’s newest radio ad is the latest effort by her campaign to capitalize on the latest remarks by Barack Obama. This radio spot highlighted the portion of Obama’s interview with the Reno Journal-Gazette in which he said: “The Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10, 15 years.”
“Really? Aren’t those the ideas that got us into the economic mess we’re in today? Ideas like special tax breaks for Wall Street,” the narrator of the radio ad had asked. The narrator adds: “Running up a $9 trillion debt. Refusing to raise the minimum wage or deal with the housing crisis. Are those the ideas Barack Obama’s talking about?”
So far, both Hillary and her husband former president Bill Clinton continuously raised those comments on the campaign trail.
Bill Burton, spokesman for Obama had called the ad a negative and dishonest attack.
“In her newest negative, dishonest attack, Clinton claims that Obama praised Republican ideas apparently in an attempt to obscure her record of voting for Republican ideas like bankruptcy, NAFTA and, of course, the war in Iraq,” Burton said.
“That fact that Hillary Clinton has praised Ronald Reagan and supported some of the very worst Republican ideas just underscores that she will say or do anything to get elected,” he added.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign stood its ground and said that the ad was straightforward.
“This ad straightforwardly uses Sen. Obama’s own words in his own voice saying the Republican Party was the party of ideas for the past 10-15 years,” said Mo Elleithee, spokesman for Clinton.
Mo added: “We can understand why the Obama campaign would be frustrated with that. The bottom line is that Sen. Clinton is running for president in order to replace those ideas with new ones like jumpstarting our economy, creating jobs and protecting people’s homes.”