Clinton on Finkelstein

Former President Bill Clinton says it's "sad" that a Republican political consultant who married his male partner is raising funds to defeat Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Finkelstein told the New York Times last week that he had married his partner of 40 years in Massachusetts, saying he believes "visitation rights, health care benefits and other human relationship contracts that are taken for granted by all married people should be available to partners." The marriage took place in December.

Clinton said Monday there might be "some sort of self-loathing" for Arthur Finkelstein, the longtime GOP operative who helped Gov. George Pataki unseat Democrat Mario Cuomo in 1994.

Finkelstein is lining up donors to help raise $10 million for a "Stop Her Now" committee to defeat the senator's 2006 re-election effort.

"I thought, one of two things. Either this guy believes his party is not serious and is totally Machiavellian in its position, or you know, as David Brock said in his great book Blinded by the Right, there's some sort of self-loathing or something. I was more sad for him."

In the book Clinton was referring to, the formerly conservative Brock says that when he attacked the left he was expressing his own gay self-hatred.