On the February 25 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, when asked by co-host Sean Hannity whether “somebody's going to have to go to Hillary Clinton and say, 'Get out of this thing [the Democratic primary race],' ” guest Pete Snyder, a Republican strategist, responded, “I think someone is going to have to go out there and take her behind the barn.” The comment came during a discussion of the state of the Democratic race between Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama. Snyder went on to explain, “I grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and that's kind of the term they use for that.”
As the lyrics “Two go out and one comes back/The way it's always been” in the band Agriculture Club's song "Take 'Em For a Walk Behind the Barn" indicate, taking someone “behind the barn” is a reference to the act of taking someone -- or some thing, in the case of the dog Old Yeller -- out and shooting him or her.
From the February 25 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes:
HANNITY: Let me ask you, Pete, if I can here for just a second. Look, Barack Obama is up by, what, 152 in terms of delegates. Superdelegates are looking for reasons to leave her [Hillary Clinton] and move towards Barack Obama.
She's desperately trying to cheat, as far as I'm concerned, and seat delegates when she agreed not to, from Michigan and in Florida. She's not doing well in the polls in Texas now. Is there a time where Bob Novak is right, somebody's going to have to go to Hillary Clinton and say, “Get out of this thing”?
SNYDER: You know, I think someone is going to have to go out there and take her behind the barn. You know, I grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and that's kind of the term to use for that. And I'm not lifting that language there.
Look, you know, Sean, you hit the word -- you hit the right word there: desperate. When you have a campaign that's based on inevitability and somewhere along the line, you show weakness, this is what happens.
HANNITY: Yeah.
SNYDER: This campaign has been all about her personal ambition, not about what she's offering the country. And that's why it's going down. And this is the real signs of a flailing, desperate campaign. They're grasping at anything.