Dallas – Richard Collins, a wealthy Texas philanthropist, businessman and political aficionado, heaps praise on the woman he has set out to destroy, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.
“She looks like a winner,” said Collins, sitting in his high-rise office with sweeping views of the city. “She’s run a good campaign, very consistent, no mistakes.”
But make no mistake about it: Collins is just one in a vast army of professional “Hillary haters” who are banking on Clinton’s becoming the Democratic nominee.
Like the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” in the 2004 election who denigrated John Kerry’s military service in Vietnam, Collins and others are searching for just the thing that will crystallize the way voters think and feel about her.
And not in a good way.
Armed with new technologies and fueled by animus, they are bent on preventing “four more years” of Clintonism. Every old charge, it seems, is being repackaged and sold as new. Every rumor is given a new, blog-stoked currency.
The rise of the Internet has meant that more people are getting their message out without the expense of paper, postage or manpower.
Anyone with a laptop can weigh in on the political debate and alter a candidate’s course, and Clinton opponents have started early.
With his affable demeanor and sixth-generation Texas twang, Collins, 60, is the force behind , a humorous and snarky website, as well as an independent expenditure group dedicated to stopping Clinton’s march to the White House.
His efforts have included flying a “StopHerNow.com” banner over the site of the South Carolina Democratic debate, as well as an animated cartoon called “The Hillary Show,” a “Jetsons”-like satire that portrays Clinton as a mean and unforgiving talk-show host.
“This is not personal,” said Collins, a Republican who has donated money to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. “It’s about her policies. We think they would be wrong for the country.”
Clinton said that she knows the attacks will come and that she’s uniquely qualified in knowing how to fight back.
“I’ve been through it, and I understand their tactics,” Clinton told voters last week at a house party in Concord, N.H. “And I have been subjected to them for 15 years, and I have survived them.”
