Newest leftist anti-Hillary meme: She said “god bless” rich people!

posted at 5:45 pm on May 3, 2008 by Allahpundit

It’s the liberal version of the outrage over Wright’s “god damn America” comment: Hillary doesn’t actually have warm feelings towards the upper class, does she? I’m guessing no, that she used this phrase in the same way that an atheist like the big A has used it many times on this very site, as a way of saying that there’s nothing wrong with something. She was being challenged by O’Reilly for wanting to raise taxes on the top bracket; this was her way of reassuring him that she’s not a socialist with some sort of grudge against wealth per se. Fast forward to AOL blogger Tom Christopher on a conference call with her campaign team the next day:

First of all, Senator Clinton has been reaching out to blue-collar voters, most recently commuting to work with and pumping gas with a steel worker yesterday or the day before, but then on The O’Reilly Factor last night, she said, and I quote, “Rich people, God bless us. We deserve all the opportunities to make sure our country and our blessings continue to the next generation.” I think that that begs the question, is she trying to have it both ways…like, who is she really going to look out for?

“[T]he statement was clearly a wink to affluent voters,” writes Christopher, “a way of saying, ‘Sure, I want to help working stiffs, but don’t worry, I won’t hurt us rich folks too badly.’” Heaven forfend. The best part, though? Instead of dismissing the question as idiotic or pointing to the many, many other liberals worth tens of millions of dollars who don’t consider themselves “elitists” by virtue of that fact — Arianna and Mikey Moore are just two who pop to mind — Clinton aide Howard Wolfson actually lied through his teeth by insisting that Her Majesty had actually said “god blessed” us, transforming the statement from a normative into a merely descriptive observation.

Got all that? No? Doesn’t matter. Just watch the clip and file this away for the next time the left stamps its feet about insufficient attention to policy and “substance” in the media’s campaign coverage.

Blowback

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I think she’s just trying to make an opposite sound bite from Wright’s. Never thought she was sincere anyway, but it is “bless” not “blessed”; the second is true, just not what she said in that quote.

Vanquisher on May 3, 2008 at 5:51 PM

God bless [rich people].

The most sensible thing she’s ever said.

loganthompson on May 3, 2008 at 5:52 PM

God bless the people “rich” enough to sign my paycheck.

RBMN on May 3, 2008 at 6:01 PM

God bless rich people, God bless poor people, God bless the middle class, God bless people of color, God bless people of pale pigmentation, God even bless the three people running for president.

Lord, please bless the United States of America.

There have I covered everyone?

talking_mouse on May 3, 2008 at 6:03 PM

It depends on what “is” is.

RobCon on May 3, 2008 at 6:03 PM

Hillary put two of the Left’s most hated nouns, “God” and “rich people,” in the same sentence!

Cicero43 on May 3, 2008 at 6:04 PM

Hillary said this in front of a Republican. She is like Zelig. What she thinks depends on who she is trying to impress; just like most cheap pols.

RobCon on May 3, 2008 at 6:06 PM

she used this phrase in the same way that an atheist like the big A has used it many times on this very site

Must you mention that you are an atheist every other post? It gets really old.

It reminds me of those prepubescent revolutionaries on YouTube and MySpace who give themselves nicknames like AtheistOverlord and FreeThinkingAgnostic.

Mommy’s proud of you. Now, give yourself a sticky silver star on your shirt.

Jungliszt on May 3, 2008 at 6:09 PM

Ha, here I came thinking this post was going to be about leftist outrage over her invoking the name of “God”. In fact the moment I saw her say it during the interview I thought there’d be backlash. Again, because she said “God”, not the other stuff… especially given that she quickly spins in to a “share the wealth and I want to keep it coming” statement.

RightWinged on May 3, 2008 at 6:10 PM

This conversation is not helping Chelsea Clinton.

SouthernGent on May 3, 2008 at 6:13 PM

Appears to me that the left is getting pretty desperate if they are trying to make a big issue out of this. Pathetic.

katieanne on May 3, 2008 at 6:24 PM

She was just making a point, that’s all…that it’s a good thing that there are rick people around whose incomes she can redistribute. The part about “God bless”ing was tongue in cheek.

BTW, did she appear to anyone to be trying to flirt a little in that interview? That little minx!

surrounded on May 3, 2008 at 6:36 PM

It’s cool you guys. She meant the “good” rich people. Like Hollywood, and Ted Turner, and Obama…

Grayson on May 3, 2008 at 6:58 PM

SouthernGent on May 3, 2008 at 6:13 PM

If all else fails, pull a Michelle O.

malan89 on May 3, 2008 at 7:06 PM

I don’t think there is enough evidence there to prove anyone but Wolfson wrong. I suspect she thought she was just making silly sounds.

snaggletoothie on May 3, 2008 at 7:21 PM

Isn’t putting God Bless Rich people together in the same
sentence,no different than putting a cross up in front of
a vampire,or like throwing water on the witch from OZ!

Did Hillary have a Religious experience,a near death seeing
the beautiful white light tunnel,or is she just making her
usual cold calculating number crunching to suck up and try
and pander for the filthy,dirty rotten rich people vote!

canopfor on May 3, 2008 at 7:26 PM

If all else fails, pull a Michelle O.

malan89 on May 3, 2008 at 7:06 PM

You’ve noticed the Obamas suddenly have their kids with them after Michelle said that. Will PMSNBC question if they are whoring their kids?

SouthernGent on May 3, 2008 at 7:34 PM

Hillary the lifelong New Yorker is master of regional colloquialisms. She certainly lived in the South long enough to pick up on the dreaded “bless his heart,” which ain’t exactly a compliment. It’s not much of a linguistic leap from there to “God bless ‘em.”

Xrlq on May 3, 2008 at 7:36 PM

Xrlq, you just stole my thunder.

Hillary’s paraphrasing the ol’ “God bless ‘em”. Like a Yankees fan saying: “Oh, those Red Sox fans, God bless ‘em, they sure are annoying.”

But then she stresses “US” to make sure, as she’s done quite a bit in the past few years, to remind us that she’s one of the rich folks who don’t deserve to keep their own money. She wants to convince us that her raising our taxes is a magnanimous act on her part.

Tuning Spork on May 3, 2008 at 7:48 PM

Tuning Spork on May 3, 2008 at 7:48 PM

Yeah, kinda like simply staying home and raising her own child, while putting her career and material desires on hold, would have been a (gasp!) novel and “magnanimous” act.

surrounded on May 3, 2008 at 7:58 PM

Oh, sorry, I seem to have started drinking a tad early again…wrong thread…just apply my previous comment to the “mom” thing.

Heh.

surrounded on May 3, 2008 at 8:01 PM

How bourgeois of her.

CP on May 3, 2008 at 8:15 PM

Yeah, it’s the ‘us’ that jumped out at me too. Is she picking up M. Obama’s verbal habit, or is she contrasting her lucky, grateful self with the resentful Obamas?

Nevicata on May 3, 2008 at 8:16 PM

God bless rich people?

Nah nah nah nah nah!

God damn rich people! It’s in the Democrat playbook.

misterpeasea on May 3, 2008 at 8:47 PM

I’d have thought the idea the God blessed rich people with money — as opposed to, say, all the other undeserving schmucks — would be more controversial than what she did say.

JM Hanes on May 3, 2008 at 8:52 PM

God bless rich people?

Nah nah nah nah nah!

God damn rich people! It’s in the Democrat playbook.

misterpeasea on May 3, 2008 at 8:47 PM

LOL! Nicely done.

CP on May 3, 2008 at 9:21 PM

that she used this phrase in the same way that an atheist like the big A has used it many times on this very site

yikes, talking bout yourself in the third person?

first sign of dementia dude

and what’s this about “the big A”?

I heard you were short and really handsome

Tom Cruise complex?

windansea on May 3, 2008 at 9:36 PM

Hillary put two of the Left’s most hated nouns, “God” and “rich people,” in the same sentence!

Cicero43 on May 3, 2008 at 6:04 PM

ftfy.

VolMagic on May 3, 2008 at 9:46 PM

Sure beats damning people as a whole, no?

thirtypundit on May 3, 2008 at 9:58 PM

Most of the comments so far strike me as spectacularly unfair. Hilary is running towards the center which should please us. Yet, all you people do is complain and call her liar. There is a certain problem with running towards the center and then trying to rule hard left. You have no mandate for the insanity. It’s why Jimmy Carter and the Democrats were already in difficulty before the Iran hostage crisis. Or even consider Bill Clinton in 1993 before he was chastened by the 1994 election.

It’s strikes me that there’s only one person in this race that deserves the level of hatred some people place on Hilary: Michele Obama. Michele seems to actually hate America like Rev. Wright–despite any efforts I make to interpret her sympathetically. I predict that some day it will come out that B. Hussein stayed at Trinity because Michele wanted the family there. We’ll see over the next five years if my prediction is correct. Until I see evidence to the contrary, I would argue that Michele Obama hating is ok, but even it should be kept reasonable. And of course, we must remember that B. Hussein is not Michele. In fact, B. Hussein is probably the victim of her bad temper.

thuja on May 3, 2008 at 11:04 PM

It’s strikes me that there’s only one person in this race that deserves the level of hatred some people place on Hilary: Michele Obama.

Hillary is misguided but she probaly loves her country

MIchelle O…not so much if at all

windansea on May 3, 2008 at 11:52 PM

re: Michelle Obama

She’s a black gal in a white country. It may not seem that way anymore, but that’s how she grew up.

It’s all fine and dandy when we can go through our days npot thinking about race in America. But, when you’re black in America, you know ev-er-y day that you’re black in America.

As much as we’re all sick of it all, it’s still true. Even an able woman like Michelle Obama can still — no matter how glorious her success — remember that she is black in America.

Race in America is not nothing. Race ANYWHERE is not nothing.

We all have prejudices that we’re never even aware of. Cripples. Kids. “Slowness”. Sex. Age. Taste in music, even. We make constantly make choices and don’t care who thinks what about it.

You’d all likely jump all over me if I said “Racism exists in America”. But would you jump on me if I simply said “racism exists”?

Are we, as Americans, so blinded by our own beloved rhetoric that we’ve blinded ourselves to reality?

Life is not the Andy Griffith Show. Not for black Americans, anyway. And it’s not because America is wrong, it’s because we don’t always live up to our country’s promise.

Ronald Reagan said (from memory): “We believe that all Americans are created equal in the eyes of God. But, as Americans, that is not enough. As Americans, we must be equal in the eyes of each other”

Tuning Spork on May 4, 2008 at 1:14 AM

Tuning Spork on May 4, 2008 at 1:14 AM

She’s a black gal in one of the most ethnically diverse countries on the freaking planet.

quith CIA World Factbook:

http://geography.about.com/library/cia/blcusa.htm

“white 81.7%, black 12.9%, Asian 4.2%, Amerindian and Alaska native 1%, native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander 0.2% (2003 est.)
note: a separate listing for Hispanic is not included because the US Census Bureau considers Hispanic to mean a person of Latin American descent (including persons of Cuban, Mexican, or Puerto Rican origin) living in the US who may be of any race or ethnic group (white, black, Asian, etc.)”

Since we know self-described Hispanics/Latinos constitute about 20-25% of the population, you can shave about 15 points off the white listing (not even counting illegals, who would not get a Census and further slash the white majority.), as seen here:

http://www.adherents.com/adh_dem.html

She’s a black gal in a country that found slavery so appauling we had a war over it where hundreds of thousands of Americans died. Do they still teach the Civil War in school, or have out education overlords replaced that with classes on the proper use of condoms for “alternative lifestyles?”

Does any black person seriously consider the United States the worst place they could possibly live? There’s plenty of black guys and black gals in Sierra Leone who had their hands amputaded by an evil and corrupt black dictator. We’ve had several stories on the tyranny of Mugabe, whose entire premise was to hurt the white man in a country with pretty much reverse statistics to the US (75% black).

Race in America is most often used as a political power ploy by Democrats who want to see black guys and black gals permanently stuck on welfare and completely dependent on the government. Why keep them as voteless slaves when they are now more useful to you as a near-monolithic voting bloc?

Michelle Obama is, at least by her own life story, the “whitest” first lady out there. So plagued is she by the fact she managed to escape the crime, drugs, and dependency of the gutter that she wrote an entire thesis imputing the university that gave her an education most people of any race would want for themselves or their children. I’m a lower-middle class white guy. My family is too rich to go to Princeton (e.g. no one will throw us grant money just for being born a certain race or gender). We also can’t afford it, so I, llike most lower-middle class white guys, survive based on sheer intelligence and work ethic. I’d balk if I ever had to take a welfare check from the government. I’d rather be dead than depend on those slime.

I’m tired of demagogues like Sharpton and Jackson, who I in my heart of hearts think they are nothing more than “professional black people.” Why work a real job when people are willing to pay you to issue grievances against the white man? I won’t be surprised if Rev. Wright joins Sharpton and Jackson to form the Holier-than-thou Trinity of Racist Reverends.

You think it’s so bad to be a black person in America? Tell your fellow blacks to stop shooting, raping, and abandoning each other. It was nearly impossible to break up a black family before 1950, now there’s a 70% illegitimacy rate. Was there a sudden outbreak in systemic racism in those years that forced blacks to discount their marriages and abandon their families? How much damage did Affirmative Action really do? I thought it was supposed to help.

To be honest, I place all my blame on the sexual de-evolution and the gangster subculture. Combine the two and you get a heaping helping of mysogyny with a side of responsibility-free anarchy. Stop blaming the “white country” for your black problems, blame “black leaders” who have sold you into an all-new version of slavery: Complete and total dependence on the government.

BKennedy on May 4, 2008 at 2:35 AM

She was obviously talking about donors.

Anyone knows rich people to dems means anyone with a taxable income.

Lonetown on May 4, 2008 at 6:16 AM

Hitlery attacks a coffee machine and it wins.

She does not know what an ATM is (but treats your bank account as one).

Now, she has a burly man (NOTE: not Wild Bill because he does not have clue either) show her where the gas tank is (despite a picture on the gauge telling you which side the filler tube is on). The one thing that should scare you is how she holds the nozzel-like the gun she used to shoot in the woods. Makes me think she has no holding us hostage to foreign oil.

All of these incidents and Obombem’ relationships with ‘far left’ wacko’s on the verge of falling off the flat earth they created, gives credence to Dizzy Dean’s idea that the Demoncrates should choose another candidate for President. But who would that be?

MSGTAS on May 4, 2008 at 9:45 AM

BKennedy on May 4, 2008 at 2:35 AM

Probably the best post I’ve read from you. Well done.

techno_barbarian on May 4, 2008 at 12:11 PM

Life is not the Andy Griffith Show. Not for black Americans, anyway. And it’s not because America is wrong, it’s because we don’t always live up to our country’s promise.

Tuning Spork on May 4, 2008 at 1:14 AM

Mot for white Americans either. Why do you think America’s promise implies white people will not suffer racial insult?

America’s promise was not a guaranteed result, but an environment for liberty. America lives up to its promise although those who demand guaranteed results are eroding the promise.

People do not live up to the Bible. I give the example of Rev Wright calling upon God to damn a nation. Now there is a man not living up to Christ or the God of Abrahm who spared Nineveh

Michelle’s problem is her sense that victimhood is a one way street. There is no room in the Bible for a double standard on sin

entagor on May 5, 2008 at 1:37 PM

I think that that begs the question, is she trying to have it both ways…like, who is she really going to look out for?

As President of the United States, shouldn’t she be looking out for both groups?

Esthier on May 5, 2008 at 3:09 PM

The day a poor person gives me a job putting me in the middle class, I’ll worry as much about their taxes as I do about the owner of the company I work for.

But last I checked, the guy at the bottom doesn’t generally do as much for me as the guy at the top.

So God Bless the Rich People, may they keep offering me a job.

gekkobear on May 5, 2008 at 3:20 PM

I was right. Just today in High Point (?), NC, she delivered an almost identical speech, only this time she said “bless their hearts” instead. When in Nome, do as the nomads do, they say. Or maybe they don’t say, but they should.

Xrlq on May 5, 2008 at 6:44 PM