Charles Krauthammer's Take On Joe Sestak

Charles Krauthammer's Excellent Summation of Sestak Bribe
Charles nailed the “Clintonian response” from the White House! If you want a quick catchup on the key issues raised by the allegations of a White House bribe of Congressman Joe Sestak, spend a few minutes with Charles Krauthammer. From Friday’s panel discussion on Fox News Special Report: The White House statement on Sestak Gate is here . It is a very well crafted document, but as Krauthammer points out it’s even more interesting for what it does NOT say. From the...

Sunday Talking Heads: May 30, 2010
Booms to close to shore photo: Michael Whitney A setback yesterday in attempts to stop the Oil hemorrhage in the Gulf. May this next attempt work . C-SPAN has three Days of the USCG-MMS Deepwater Horizon hearings , I’ve been fascinated.

The Fix: How the Sestak job offer became a big deal
Party leaders and campaign operatives -- on nearly a daily basis -- approach challenger Candidates seeking to disrupt the established political order with a simple message: Get out or else. And so, the report this morning that former President Bill Clinton was tasked by White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to make such an approach to Rep. Joe Sestak -- allegedly offering him an unpaid advisory role on an intelligence board in exchange for getting him to drop his Primary bid against Sen....

Small donors come up big for GOP candidates
For the first time in a decade, Republican Candidates for Congress are raising more than Democrats from Small donors. This Story GOP Candidates for the House and Senate this year have raised $70 million from Small donors, compared with $44 million brought in by Democratic Candidates, according to a Washington Post analysis of Campaign Finance data. The trend is another sign that Republicans have turned their political momentum into money. Reports covering the first quarter had shown that GOP...

Many new faces likely in S.C. delegation
Washington — The anti-incumbent mood sweeping the country — and two open seats — could produce more new faces in South Carolina’s Congressional delegation come next January than at any time since the post-Watergate upheaval of 1974. The state will send at least two new lawmakers to Washington. They will replace Republican U.S. Reps. Gresham Barrett, who is running for Governor, and Henry Brown, who is retiring. In the conservative Upstate, U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis also is...

Small-donor throng shifts Senate race
Small donors emerged as a financial force in Colorado's U.S. Senate race during the first quarter, rivaling political high rollers attending expensive Fundraisers. A Denver Post analysis of contributions to Candidates between January and March showed: • The financial front-runners, Democrat U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Republican Jane Norton, each got about 20 percent of their money last quarter from major Fundraisers where donors wrote checks for as much as $40,000. • At the same...

White House Sestak Story Doesn't Pass The Smell Test
One would think that the President of the United States would have enough respect for the people who put him in office to offer an explanation that was remotely believable. The White House released an explanation of the Job offer. The claim is that Rahm Emanuel sent Bill Clinton to meet with Congressmen Sestak to offer an unpaid Advisory position which he would hold along with his congressional job if he were to give up his quest for the Democratic nomination. The letter issued by the White...

Bill Clinton Defends Centrist Democrats
Former President Bill Clinton recently defended SeneBlanche Lincoln in Arkansas against the Democratic Party’s left flank: Using unusually vivid language to describe the threat against Sen. Blanche Lincoln , Clinton urged the voters who nurtured his career to resist outside forces bent on making an example out of the two-term Democratic Incumbent. He pounded the podium with Lincoln at his side, warning that national liberal and Labor groups wanted to make her a "poster child" in...

Tea Party’s rise could undercut mainstream GOP
Washington — The Tea Party movement is energizing elements of the Republican Party and fanning an anti-Washington fervor, but the biggest beneficiaries in the Midterm Elections, pollsters and political analysts say, could be the main target of their anger: Democrats. From North Carolina and Kentucky to Colorado and Nevada, Candidates backed by Tea Party activists are making strong showings in primaries and Opinion Polls. Some of their Campaigns, however, threaten to undercut GOP efforts...

Politics 2010: Republicans chomp to move into the governor's mansion
Republicans in New Mexico, banking on voter discontent, are expressing hope they'll reclaim the Governor's mansion. Five Republicans are on Tuesday's ballot, each hoping to lead the Party to a gubernatorial victory now that Gov. Bill Richardson, his popularity diminished and his administration tainted by a pay-to-play scandal, can't run again because of term limits. On the GOP ballot are state Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones, Albuquerque lawyer Pete Domenici Jr., son of the state's longtime former...

The Official Joe Sestak Story, Which No One is Buying
The official story: Bill Clinton did it and there’s nothing to see here. Bullshit. First, Byron York of the Washington Examiner points out that Joe Sestak was ineligible for the position Clinton supposedly offered to him… In a little-noticed passage Friday, the New York Times reported that Rep. Joe Sestak was not eligible for a place on the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, the job he was reportedly offered by former President Bill Clinton. As a sitting member of...

White House: Clinton was sent to deal with Sestak
The admission left many questions unanswered, however, and Republicans weren't ready to let the issue rest. For Obama, the revelations called into question his repeated promises to run an open government that was above back room deals. And for Sestak, it raised questions why he ever brought up the offers in the first place. Seeking to quiet the clamor over a possible political trade, the White House released a report describing the offer that was intended to clear a path for Sen. Arlen Specter...

Bill Clinton has not shrunk from the political spotlight
Bill Clinton was all over the news Friday. He was identified as the go-between in a (failed) White House effort last year to get Rep. Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania to drop his (ultimately successful) Democratic Primary challenge to Sen. Arlen Specter . And he was live, on stage, in Arkansas in a full-throated defense of embattled Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D). In Washington, of course, the Sestak melodrama got all the attention. But Clinton's efforts to save Lincoln from defeat in the June 8...

Uh Oh: It Appears As Though Obama Tried To Bribe A Second Primary Candidate
In September 2009, an article headlined “D.C. job alleged as attempt to deter Romanoff” by the Denver Post’s Michael Riley reported that Andrew Romanoff, former speaker of the Colorado House who was then still contemplating a run again against the Governor-installed, administration-sanctioned foot soldier Michael Bennet, received an “unexpected communication” from a renowned Kingmaker in Washington. “Jim Messina, President Barack Obama’s deputy chief of...

Denver Post Finally Gets Around to Mentioning Romanoff Job Offer Allegation Again
Well hallelujah! After 8 months of being in a silent lockdown mode on the subject of whether the White House offered the Democrat Senate Candidate from Colorado, Andrew Romanoff (photo), a job if he would remove himself from the Primary race, the Denver Post has finally gotten around to reporting on it again following their initial September story . By strange "coincidence" the Post's sudden willingness to once again broach this subject happened just hours after their bizarre silence...

Alleged Romanoff job offer revisited in light of Sestak flap
As the White House takes heat for offering a job to Rep. Joe Sestak as a way to entice him away from the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate Democratic Primary, political watchers in Colorado are unearthing rumors from the fall that Democratic U.S. Senate Candidate Andrew Romanoff was similarly enticed not to run against Sen. Michael Bennet. Any such deal with Romanoff has been officially denied by the White House but the Denver Post last September quoted “several sources” suggesting the...

Politics 2010: Davis hopes to make history in Alabama's gubernatorial race
U.S. Rep. Artur Davis, D-Ala., has abandoned his House seat in his historic bid to become Alabama's first black Governor. Republican Gov. Bob Riley cannot seek re-election because of term limits. Both parties will select their Candidates Tuesday, with July 13 Runoffs available if necessary. Both the Democratic and Republican gubernatorial primaries are too close to call, with many voters still making up their minds, a Capital Survey Research Center poll indicated. Among likely Democratic...

Sestak: Bill Clinton offered him job to quit race
For nearly three months this year, President Obama and his senior White House aides resisted acknowledging what the top West Wing lawyer finally admitted on Friday: This administration plays politics. This Story View All Items in This Story View Only Top Items in This Story And not always effectively. In classic Washington Fashion last summer, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel dispatched former president Bill Clinton to put the arm on an old friend, Rep. Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania....

Juan Williams Vs. Charles Krauthammer on Radical Islamic Terrorism
Via HotAirPundit. One of these men lives in reality, the other does not. Can you tell which is which? As HotAirPundit notes in his post, the image of Steve Hayes shaking his head towards the end, tells you everything you need to know.

The Fix: Can Bill Clinton save Blanche Lincoln?
1. Former President Bill Clinton, who spent much of the 1980s as the Governor of Arkansas, will stump for embattled Sen. Blanche Lincoln today in the Razorback State -- a visit that the Incumbent and her opponent Lt. Gov. Bill Halter are casting as a critical moment in their June 8 Democratic Runoff. What neither side disputes is that Clinton, who will join Lincoln at a rally in Little Rock at 12:30 pm, is immensely popular in the State -- particularly among Democrats. (Recent poll numbers we...

Krauthammer falsely claims Romanoff "has said explicitly" WH offered job to quit race
From the May 28 edition of Fox News' Special Report : KRAUTHAMMER: Last issue raised by Major -- it's also in The Washington Post . We know that in Colorado, the former state House Speaker, Andrew Romanoff, has said explicitly that the deputy White House chief of staff -- this is not anonymous, this is not somebody unnamed -- the deputy White House chief of staff offered him an administration job if he dropped out of that race. Now, that meets the criteria that the White House holds...

Analysis: Politics as usual for Obama
Washington— So much for changing how Washington works. Crimping his carefully crafted outsider image and undercutting a centerpiece of his 2008 campaign, President Barack Obama got caught playing the usual politics -- dangling a job offer for a Political favor in the hunt for power. His lawyer admitted as much in a Friday report that detailed how Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel dispatched former President Bill Clinton to try to persuade Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak to abandon his Primary...

White House transparency could have ended Sestak 'scandal'
OKAY, if all the facts are out, then we would agree: Nothing inappropriate happened. On the basis of the memorandum issued Friday by White House Counsel Robert F. Bauer , the Joe Sestak job-for-dropping-out-of-Senate-race scandal is a non-scandal -- except for the White House's bungling of the episode. The unnecessary coverup, it turns out, is always worse than the non-crime. This Story View All Items in This Story View Only Top Items in This Story The talk had been that the White House had...

The air seeps out of Fox News' hyperinflated 'Sestak scandal' balloon
You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player! DOWNLOADS: (15) PLAYS: (59) Well, now that the big News about the White House's offer to Joe Sestak has been revealed -- that is, it was simply the usual D.C. horsetrading that's been part of American politics since the Founders -- there seem to be a lot of disappointed right-wingers wondering where to take it all next. Sure, it's a luscious tidbit that Bill Clinton was involved. But unless someone can find...

GOP Senate hopes ride with tea party activists
Washington — In Kentucky, the Republican Senate Candidate stumbles over a question on Racial Segregation. In Connecticut, the Party's hopes rest on an executive who banked millions on female wrestlers in skimpy outfits. In Nevada, one contender wants to phase Out Social Security and another suggests trading chickens for medical Care. Welcome to the 2010 battle for the Senate. It's midway through President Barack Obama's term, and high Unemployment, an outbreak of anti-incumbent fever...