People News

Hillary upsets family of Bobby Kennedy

By M&C People May 25, 2008, 22:35 GMT

Democratic presidential hopeful and U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton EPA/TANNEN MAURY

The Kennedy clan is upset with presidential candidate Hillary Clinton after her mention of the assassination of Robert F Kennedy to a South Dakota newspaper.

Clinton invoked the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in attempts to explain why she's staying in the race despite calls since Iowa for her to bow out. Now critics and her allies are sounding the death knell of a campaign gone awry.

"That comment may be the last nail in her campaign's coffin," a Kennedy relative told The New York Post. "How can Hillary even use the experience argument when she repeatedly pushes the wrong buttons in her comments?"

The Post insider says, "I think people really felt that a line was crossed and that her campaign - and even her legitimacy as a politician - ended today."

Another Kennedy clan member tells the Post, "She no longer has only her husband to blame for the ill-chosen comments coming from her camp."

While Robert Kennedy Jr. came out to support Sen. Clinton on Friday, the New York Post claims "others in the family's inner circle are fuming."

Clinton's comments were made on Friday before a South Dakota newspaper's editorial staff.

The 40th anniversary of RFK's death is only two weeks away, and Kennedy family patriarch Sen. Ted Kennedy was just discovered to be fighting an aggressive brain tumor.

"We were all sort of dumbfounded that she would say such a thing," the Post reports their source as saying.

Politicians who were pro-Hillary also voiced their displeasure: Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY),  told Bloomberg News with regards to the RFK comments, that she said "the dumbest thing you could have possibly said."