A possible counter-explanation of why GOP may be attacking her in primaries

[Armstead]

Well one of the current memes from Clinton Centeral is that Karl Rove and the GOP are flooding Iowa with money and other dirty tricks to ensure that that awful unelectable Comrade Bernie because they are scared of running against her and know they'd run over sanders like a Mack Truck in the General.

Here's another possible reason -- They assume she will be the nominee and want to get a head start on weakening her. Just as the candidates in the GOP only mention Clinton as the enemy, and don't mention Bernie. He's an afterthought to them because they have bought into the conventional wisdom.

And if, as a byproduct they manage to stir up the internal contentioiusness and divisions of the Democratic primaries, that's an added bonus.

This is just a theory, but it is just as valid as the notion that they are trembling at the thought of Clinton as the nominee and want to grease the skids for Sanders.

[Thinkingabout]

1. Is this the first time the GOP has attacked Hillary, no it is mot.

Has the GOP ever attacked and vetted Sanders, it is yet to come. It will be non stop.

[Armstead]

3. They will call him a socialist a tax raiser....all the mud Clinton is currently flinging at him.

[Thinkingabout]

10. The GOP has not started vetting Sanders, truthfully Sanders is flinging the paid speeches etc at

Hillary also. Sanders calls himself a socialists, he is proposing tax increases, is this mud he is flinging at himself?

[tularetom]

2. They've already produced tons of anti-Clinton matter because they've assumed for 8 years

that she would be the nominee. They're still convinced that in the final analysis she will prevail so they are ignoring Sanders.

I think they are salivating at the chance to destroy her. They have 20 years of stuff to throw at her. I don't think Sanders even enters into the picture for them.

[Gothmog]

4. Rove also funded Nader in 2000

For some funny reason, Karl Rove funded Nader in 2000 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/ralph-nader-was-indispens_b_4235065.html

Furthermore, Karl Rove and the Republican Party knew this, and so they nurtured and crucially assisted Nader's campaigns, both in 2000 and in 2004. On 27 October 2000, the AP's Laura Meckler headlined "GOP Group To Air Pro-Nader TV Ads." She opened: "Hoping to boost Ralph Nader in states where he is threatening to hurt Al Gore, a Republican group is launching TV ads featuring Nader attacking the vice president [Mr. Gore]. ... 'Al Gore is suffering from election year delusion if he thinks his record on the environment is anything to be proud of,' Nader says [in the commercial]. An announcer interjects: 'What's Al Gore's real record?' Nader says: 'Eight years of principles betrayed and promises broken.'" Meckler's report continued: "A spokeswoman for the Green Party nominee said that his campaign had no control over what other organizations do with Nader's speeches." Bush's people - the group sponsoring this particular ad happened to be the Republican Leadership Council - knew exactly what they were doing, even though the liberal suckers who voted so carelessly for Ralph Nader obviously did not. Anyone who drives a car the way those liberal fools voted, faces charges of criminal negligence, at the very least. But this time, the entire nation crashed as a result; not merely a single car.

This is from the GOP bag of dirty tricks that worked once

[Armstead]

5. Ralph Nader was a third party spoiler

The benefits of siphoning Democratic votes to Nader in the General Election were obvious.

Apples and oranges to the situation if Sanders were the Democratic nominee.

[Gothmog]

6. Rove wants to weaken the strongest possible candidate and face the weakest possible candidate

There is a pattern here

[artislife]

7. How do you feel about Ross Perot?

He seemed pretty handy in that election.

[Armstead]

8. Maybe....or see the OP

Or maybe you're correct, and Rove is another person stuck in the template of the 90's and 00's

[snagglepuss]

9. I have a different take. I think that the real powers, that is the 1%, really don't care whether

it's Hillary or Trump as either of them will look after their interests. What TPTB don't want is Bernie and the only way to attack him is to create the belief that Repukes want him to win.

[stillwaiting]

11. TPTB have expertly split our nation in to polarized camps no doubt.

It is definitely in the realm of possibility that they would use reverse psychology on us banking on us REACTING in the manner they expect us to.

Ultimately, it makes ZERO sense to me to EVER use what Republicans SAY about anything when forming my own opinions.

I'm not a puppet, and I won't be manipulated by reacting to what Republicans say or do in forming my own opinions.

Also, they REALLY don't want Bernie as the nominee. Even if they think they do. If Bernie beats Hillary, he CRUSHES the Republican, and we have a chance at retaking the Senate. Wave election.

[Gothmog]

12. Why Bernie Sanders Is Starting to Sound a Little Like Donald Trump

This article from Slate makes some good points as to why the GOP wants Sanders to be the nominee http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/01/bernie_sanders_is_sounding_like_donald_trump_when_he_talks_about_his_electability.html

It is the Clinton mothership attack to which all subattacks are tied. Her campaign criticized Sanders on Thursday for his comment in the most recent Democratic debate about how we should “move as aggressively as we can to normalize relations with Iran.” (Read my colleague Josh Keating for a more developed consideration of Sanders’ remark.) Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon suggested that Republicans would slice Sanders apart over a remark like this. “I can safely predict,” Fallon said, “that Republicans would love to have a debate with someone who thinks we should move quickly to warmer relations with a major sponsor of terrorism like Iran.”

But the concerns are not just claptrap coming from a desperate rival campaign. Sanders would be the most left-wing nominee the Democratic Party has nominated in a long time. Republican Party operatives, who are having difficulty ushering their own most electable candidates through the primary process, aren’t laying a finger on Sanders because they pray that he wins the nomination. They’re gamely helping him advance his arguments against Clinton to this end.

Electability is not just another dumb invention of airhead political consultants and pundits, either. Undecided Democratic voters, many of whom might lean toward Bernie on his message alone, want to hear Sanders’ electability case from the man himself. “I’m thinking about [voting for Sanders],” Brad Howell of Francestown, New Hampshire, told Slate at the Peterborough rally. But he’s concerned that Sanders is not “ultimately electable.” Why? The “socialist” label? His single-payer health care plan? “It’s hard to put a finger on it.” There is a vague cloud of unelectability hovering over Sanders, then, that he’s compelled to address....

But this still does not directly address the issue of how the Republican Party is salivating over the prospect of facing him or the obvious attacks coming his way. The second that it becomes clear Sanders has the Democratic nomination mathematically secure, the national Republican apparatus will launch 1,000 ads with a hammer and sickle superimposed over Sanders’ face. The Soviet anthem will play, and words like “$30 trillion socialist government takeover plan!” in blinking text will appear. And, as Sen. Ted Cruz would say, that’s just on Day One. What I’m getting at is that the critical early effort to define Sanders will be unsubtle. Will it work? How will he respond?

Sanders is not electable in a general election contest where the Kochs will be spending $887 million and the RNC candidate may spend another billion dollars. The GOP would love to see Sanders be the nominee which is why Rove and others are supporting Sanders

[Gothmog]

13. The media is noticing that the GOP and Rove are supporting Sanders

[Kentonio]

14. I think they probably do think they'd easily beat Bernie

But I also think they're out of touch, arrogant and would have a real shock waiting for them, just like the one Hillary is currently experiencing.

[Gothmog]

16. Karl Rove is very good at dirty tricks

[Kentonio]

17. True. But he's beatable.

[Gothmog]

15. Anti-Sanders attack ad isn’t quite what it seems to be

Another republican is running an ad designed to help Sanders in the primary process. This ad uses the same trick that Claire McCaskill used in 2012 to select Todd Akin as her opponent because Akin would be the weakest possible general election candidate http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/anti-sanders-attack-ad-isnt-quite-what-it-seems-be

Republicans have made no secret of the fact that they’d prefer to run against Bernie Sanders in the general election. Whether or not their assumptions are correct is a separate question, but GOP officials, convinced that the senator would be easy to defeat, have gone out of their way to help Sanders in the Democratic race.....

At first blush, the move may seem encouraging to Sanders supporters. After all, if Republicans have gone from defending Sanders to attacking him, maybe it means GOP insiders are getting scared of the Vermont independent?

It’s a nice idea, but that’s not what’s going on here. In fact, far from an attack ad, this commercial, backed by a prominent Republican mega-donor, is the latest evidence of the GOP trying to help Sanders, not hurt him.

Indeed, in this case, it’s hardly even subtle. This commercial touts Sanders’ support for tuition-free college, single-payer health care, and higher taxes on the “super-rich.” It concludes that the senator is “too liberal,” which isn’t much of an insult in an ad directed towards liberal voters in Iowa.

In other words, we’re talking about a Republican mega-donor investing in a faux attack ad to help Sanders win because he sees Sanders as easy to beat in November.

It’s the mirror image of the tactic Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) used in the 2012 U.S. Senate race in Missouri, when she invested in ads intended to boost then-Rep. Todd Akin (R) in his primary race, with commercials touting his far-right positions and calling him “too conservative.” The point was to make Akin look better in the eyes of Missouri Republicans so he’d win the primary, making it easier for the incumbent Democrat to defeat him on Election Day.

This ad is just another example of the GOP trying to help Sanders become the nominee because the GOP knows that Sanders is the weaker candidate.