Clinton Finds Way to Play Along With Drudge

I guess all is fair in war and politics. So, Mr. Barack you better get ready cause Ms. Hillary is making moves right out of the Republicans playbook.


WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 — As Senator Barack Obama prepared to give a major speech on Iraq one morning a few weeks ago, a flashing red-siren alert went up on the Drudge Report Web site. It read, “Queen of the Quarter: Hillary Crushes Obama in Surprise Fund-Raising Surge,” and, “$27 Million, Sources Tell Drudge Report.”

Within minutes, the Drudge site had injected Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s fund-raising success into the day’s political news on the Internet and cable television. It did not halt coverage of Mr. Obama’s speech or his criticism of her vote to authorize the war in 2002, but along the front lines of the campaign — the hourly, intensely fought effort to capture the news cycle or deny ownership of it to the other side — it was a telling assault............

........Senior aides in the Bush war room, run by Steve Schmidt, a veteran Republican communications aide, insisted on vetting any information to be fed to Mr. Drudge so as not to annoy and overwhelm him with items he might find unworthy. And, these officials said, when the approval was given, the main point of contact was usually the Bush aide who was closest to Mr. Drudge, J. Timothy Griffin, now a consultant to the campaign of Fred D. Thompson, the former Republican senator from Tennessee.


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Oh, That Tim Griffin

If you get a chance definitely take a look at Jim Rutenberg's piece on Drudge in the Times today, particularly on the Drudge-Hillary alliance of convenience.

But did anyone else notice this passage ...

Senior aides in the Bush war room, run by Steve Schmidt, a veteran Republican communications aide, insisted on vetting any information to be fed to Mr. Drudge so as not to annoy and overwhelm him with items he might find unworthy. And, these officials said, when the approval was given, the main point of contact was usually the Bush aide who was closest to Mr. Drudge, J. Timothy Griffin, now a consultant to the campaign of Fred D. Thompson, the former Republican senator from Tennessee.

Rutenberg doesn't mention it (and I suspect didn't make the connection). But that's none other than our pal, Tim Griffin, the guy at the center of the US Attorney scandal, the Rove aide who got a Patriot Act appointment to be the US Attorney in the Eastern District of Arkansas. Guess we were on firm ground saying he had a pretty strong partisan profile.

TPM--Josh Marshall