Is The Honeymoon Over For Hillary Clinton And Rupert Murdoch?
April 1st, 2008
By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
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Sometimes marriages are made in heaven. And then there are the political marriages that are seemingly made further south, in hotter climes. Now there’s a report that the honeymoon may be over between Democratic Presidential nomination aspirant Senator Hillary Clinton and conservative mega-media-giant News Corp maven Rupert Murdoch.
For political and media junkies, its timing could not be more fascinating.
These are the days when Clinton, eager to pull out all stops to win the Pennsylvania primary, met with right-wing Pittsburgh billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife – the guy who basically went after her husband for years, funded op-research on Bill Clinton and ran pieces accusing the Clintons of dirty work in the death of Vince Foster — and won if not his heart than his personally-written endorsement.
So perhaps it’s exchanging one Democratic party nemesis for another — after all Clinton already WON the New York primary — but the New York Times notes that breaking up is hard to do:
A popular parlor game in political circles in recent years has been dissecting the shifting relationship between Rupert Murdoch, the conservative media mogul, and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
Two years ago, there were signs of a thaw, with Mr. Murdoch, who owns The New York Post, not only endorsing Mrs. Clinton’s bid for a second Senate term in his paper, but also organizing a fund-raiser for her.
Recently, though, the relationship appears to have taken a turn for the worse. Mrs. Clinton has been skewered in The Post throughout her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, and recently taken to task over her claim that she had encountered sniper fire in a visit to Bosnia as first lady (though she later said she had “misspoken”). The newspaper even ran an article, datelined Sarajevo, to debunk what one of its headlines labeled a “ ‘low blow’ lie.”
Now another sign has emerged offering possible clues to Mrs. Clinton’s Murdoch status: Mr. Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth is holding a fund-raiser at her London home this month for Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.
On the other hand, there are enough variables to suggest that this may be more of an inching away from a closer relationship than any kind of a divorce. For one thing, for several years the apparent Clinton-Murdoch alliance benefited both sides.
For another, the new NY Times article notes that:
…analysis of campaign contributions from employees of the News Corporation and its affiliates, including 20th Century Fox, Fox Sports and the like, reveals they skew heavily Democratic and toward Mrs. Clinton, who collected more than $100,000 in donations compared with about $80,000 for Mr. Obama.
The records show that the employees gave less than $20,000 to Republicans seeking their party’s presidential nomination.
Last year, even Mr. Murdoch contributed $2,300 to Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign. His son James contributed $3,450 to Mrs. Clinton. This followed The Post’s endorsement of her re-election in 2006, as well as Mr. Murdoch’s highly publicized fund-raiser for her.
So Murdoch’s employees are more prone towards Hillaryland versus Obamaland or even McCainland.
And then there are statements from the Clinton campaign about how unbiased Fox News is.
In reality, wooing the people who control the press is not new in American politics. What is new and surprising to some is Clinton’s desire (for those who considered her a polarizer) and ability (she wins them over) to in-effect court rich publishers who have demonized her and her husband and even in one case suggested they were involved with murder.
Yes, politics does make strange bedfellows. And Mrs. Clinton is hoping that 8 months from now the elections will give birth to a new title before her name (President-elect Hillary Clinton).
But is all of this this negative? Not necessarily.
To many Democrats, it’s jaw-dropping. But it shows that Clinton (a) can win over her most bitter foes, and, (b) is willing to take a deep breath and make peace with those who were out for her husband’s and her political scalps…if the peace treaty can advance the Clintons’ main goal.
It does raise a question: what next, a meeting and endorsement from Rush Limbaugh?
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 9:09 pm and is filed under Fox, Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, Newsweek Blogitics, Media, Hillary Clinton, 2008 Elections, Conservatives, Democrats, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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