Obama Administration Tosses Clintons Under The Bus
Irradiated by LabRat
Via Alan by way of Uncle all the way back to Fox News.
The White House asked former President Bill Clinton to talk to Rep. Joe Sestak about the possibility of obtaining a senior position in the Obama administration if he would drop out of the Democratic primary race against establishment-backed Sen. Arlen Specter, the Obama administration said in a report released Friday morning…..
“This is punishable by prison. This is a felony,” said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who has been leading the charge for more details on the allegation.
“This is about the White House. This is not about Congressman Sestak,” Issa said, adding that he wants to know what Clinton was empowered to say. “They’ve answered a question and it begs many more answers,” he said. “We want elections not to be appointments.”
Sestak’s opponent in the general election for the Senate seat, Republican Pat Toomey, questioned why it took so long for this explanation.
“If this explanation is as innocent as it looks, I sure don’t know why it took three months to say so,” Toomey said in a statement. “As I’ve said many times, this job offer issue is not my focus, and it’s not where Pennsylvanians want the focus of the campaign to be.”
Critics say the Sestak job offer may have violated the part of the U.S. code that says: “Whoever, directly or indirectly, promises any employment, position, compensation…appointment…provided for or made possible in whole or in part by any Act of Congress…to any person as consideration, favor, or reward for any political activity…or in connection with any primary election …shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.”
My reaction: 
Ell. Oh. Ell.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this is ever going to go to the Watergate place and be as damaging as Republicans would like to hope, though they’d be fools to just let this one slide. It’s too easy to phrase these kinds of offers so that nothing illegal is said or done, and from what I understand it’s done all the time.
But throwing freaking Bill Clinton under the bus? While Hillary is his secretary of state? After a primary election as bitter as 2008? The Obama administration picked the wrong damn Democrat to fuck with. That’s like shivving one of the Corleones and expecting that to solve your problems rather than create a vast new galaxy of them.
My only regret is that most of the backdraft probably isn’t going to happen where we can watch and eat popcorn…
May 29th, 2010 at 12:35 am
Wow yet another mess. Certainly this has the signs of one big cover up. Sestak should have just taken the Secretary of the Navy position and kept his mouth shut. Now he is going to embroil Obama, Rahm, and Bill Clinton. Doesn’t Bill Clinton have better things to do that get involved in this Nixonian type of mess? What would Blago do?
May 29th, 2010 at 9:12 am
Oh yeah… NOW things are going to get interesting…
May 29th, 2010 at 10:22 am
I agree. Very funny. It must be getting crowded under that carpet where they keep sweeping the true shit.
June 1st, 2010 at 11:42 am
Not being a particular fan of the Obama Administration, I’m still with Mickey Kaus on this - the scandal, if there is one, is that it’s illegal in the first place.
(And how incompetently the reaction was handled. It’s amateur hour!)
June 1st, 2010 at 5:09 pm
The real question is - how much more corrupt would government be if people were openly being paid not to run?
I’d imagine “not a whole lot more”. In fact it may even make the paper trail more honest. All forms of political contribution are, at their root, the buying of votes. We may as well be transparent about it.
June 3rd, 2010 at 8:14 am
Obama has got to be worried about a 2012 primary challenge from Hillary. Expect more “politics of personal destruction” targeting her from the left in the next year.