Hillary’s ‘Southern Strategy’: Muslim-Baiting

So this is the big secret that Hillary’s campaign is trying to warn us will crop up like some old floozie of Bill’s to wreck the Dems chances if they nominate Obama? Hillary surrogate Senator Bob Kerrey casually tossed out this little bon mot on Sunday: “It’s probably not something that appeals to him, but I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim. There’s a billion people on the planet that are Muslims and I think that experience is a big deal.” Kerrey added, “He’s got a whale of a lot more intellectual talent than I’ve got as well.”

So was Kerrey’s smarmy bit of racist fear-mongering endorsed by Hillary? Plausible denial, we’re sure. And what is Kerrey’s reward for stooping this low? You really expect better from a fellow whose day job is running the New School than to come off like some country-club racist:

Oh, isn’t it just charming that Obama (rhymes with Osama) just happens to have the middle name of the former Iraqi dictator. Muslims, you gotta love ’em. And there’s a billion of them, you know. Very important experience that young Barack HUSSEIN Obama has there. Wonder why he doesn’t make more of it?

I guess this is the equivalent from a clearly panicked Clinton camp of Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy,” unsubtly telegraphing message of fear and loathing to a racist base.

Actually, it may be more like the Polish election campaign strategy of that scumbag Lech Walesa in 1990, which pushed the idea that his rival, Solidarity President Tadeusz Mazowiecki, was actually Jewish. That Mazowiecki was actually Catholic was beside the point (Obama, by the way, is a church-going Christian); the point was to trade on the residual anti-Semitism of a section of the Polish electorate.

A sad, day, I’m afraid for a Democratic Party whose front-running candidate is a lot longer on personal ambition than on vision. Tested candidate, indeed…