GOP to Launch 'Stop Hillary' Web site
A top political adviser to New York Governor George Pataki is reportedly planning to launch a Web site targeting Sen. Hillary Clinton's 2006 re-election bid, in an apparent effort to duplicate the success of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in last year's presidential race.
The "Stop Her Now" Web site is the brainchild of Arthur Finkelstein, according to the New York Post. "The site could draw millions of dollars in anti-Clinton campaign cash from across the nation," a state GOP source told the paper.
The Web domains StopHerNow.com and StopHerNow.org are owned by longtime Pataki aide Patrick Donohue.
The development irked Howard Wolfson, Sen. Clinton's spokesman during her 2000 campaign. He complained that Finkelstein would run a "negative campaign of lies and distortions."
The decision to turn to the Internet is a de facto acknowledgment that the so-called "tough New York press corps" failed to do its job during Clinton's campaign five years ago, when a whole host of questions about the former first lady's involvement in a number of controversies during the 1990s went unexplored.
Much the same thing happened during the 2004 presidential race, when the establishment press ignored over 200 veterans who served alongside Sen. John Kerry in Vietnam and said he was unfit to serve as commander in chief.
The Swiftvets succeeded in getting their message across using, first, the Internet and talk radio and then cable TV later in the campaign.
Clinton accuser Kathleen Willey has already vowed not to let Sen. Clinton get away with sanitizing her history.
"I have some words of advice for the former first lady," Willey told NewsMax in November. "Remember the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth."
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