Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Oh Canada! NAFTA-gate bites hand that feeds it…maybe

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NAFTA-gate, as the Clinton camp calls it, may have been about them (or as much about them as Obama).  Turns out the Canadian PM’s Chief of Staff originally said that it was the Clinton campaign that had reassured the Canadian government that all this talk about renegotiating NAFTA was just posturing.  So, if this turns out to be true (and who knows the way this story is going), Clinton was telling Ohio voters one thing and her campaign was telling the Canadian Govt another and then she actually went out and accused Obama of doing that same thing.  That is what you call a double ruse – a fraud within a fraud.

More from the story in Canada’s Globe and Mail.

Mr. Brodie, apparently seeking to play down the potential impact on Canada, told the reporters the threat was not serious, and that someone from Ms. Clinton’s campaign had even contacted Canadian diplomats to tell them not to worry because the NAFTA threats were mostly political posturing.

The Canadian Press cited an unnamed source last night as saying that several people overheard the remark.

The news agency quoted that source as saying that Mr. Brodie said that someone from Ms. Clinton’s campaign called and was “telling the embassy to take it with a grain of salt.”

I’m sure the Clinton camp will deny this.  But when you play this game it tends to blowback.  Interesting to see where this all goes but I am sure Obama is gonna seize on this.  Biased media, my ass – they ran the Clinton lines for days on this before actually digging deep.  And believe me, if journalists do have something against Clinton its because of this kind of spin.

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Comments

  1. Go back to the origional CTV report and newspaper stories when this broke a week ago. There was a report that a Clinton Campaign person had also talked with the Canadian Government. The Clinton Campaign denied it then and gave the Canadian Government permission to disclose the name of the Campaign staffer in a call/visit had happened.

  2. Just went to the link posted – are you kidding me?

    <

    p>The editors demoted my post about the CTV report after the Obama Campaign denied this story:

    <

    p>http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/s…

    <

    p>Well it turns out that the story (and my demoted post) had legs and may have had an impact on the Ohio/Texas primaries (the story not my post!)

    <

    p>And now we get the post above that leaves out the significant part of the story:

    <

    p>”The news agency quoted that source as saying that Mr. Brodie said that someone from Ms. Clinton’s campaign called and was “telling the embassy to take it with a grain of salt.”

    <

    p>The story was followed by CTV’s Washington bureau chief, Tom Clark, who reported that the Obama campaign, not the Clinton’s, had reassured Canadian diplomats.
    Mr. Clark cited unnamed Canadian sources in his initial report.

    <

    p>There was no explanation last night for why Mr. Brodie was said to have referred to the Clinton campaign but the news report was about the Obama campaign. Robert Hurst, president of CTV News, declined to comment.”

    <

    p>

      • Days later, the leak of the internal Canadian diplomatic note revealed that Mr. Obama’s adviser, Austan Goolsbee, spoke to Mr. Rioux on Feb. 8.

        In a summary of the meeting written by Canadian diplomat Joseph de Mora, Mr. Goolsbee was described as indicating that Mr. Obama’s NAFTA stand “should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans.” Mr. Goolsbee denied using those terms.

        • They may deny it.  But that does not mean it didn’t happen.  Brodie has never said that he was mistaken in citing the Clinton campaign as the generator of the comment.  Until that happens this seems live.

  4. I haven’t seen this posted yet (haven’t been reading as regularly the last day or two), but there is a CBC story that was discussed on dKos yesterday.

  5. If Clinton says it’s not true it must not be true–why?
    Was Brodie lying when he said that someone from the Clinton campaign was telling the embassy to take it with a grain of salt?

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