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Sestak Job Offer Microscandal Was a Waste of Time, Energy
Tweet Share on Facebook May 29, 2010 Comment (21)By Scott Galupo, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
There are still a couple of questions about the White House effort to persuade Rep. Joe Sestak to quit his primary campaign against Sen. Arlen Specter.
The first one that springs to mind is: Did Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who apparently dispatched his old boss, former President Bill Clinton, to do the sweet-talking, actually think the offer of an unpaid executive advisory would be at all enticing? -
Kansas Republican: VAT Tax Would Cripple U.S. Recovery
Tweet Share on Facebook May 28, 2010 Comment (12)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Kansas Republican Rep. Todd Tiahrt is demonstrating the kind of leadership that is sorely needed in Washington right now.
Fearing that a commission chartered by President Barack Obama and chaired by former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Republican U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson will recommend the introduction of a value added tax to pay down the debt all of Obama’s new spending has accrued, Tiahrt has authored a resolution asking Congress to go on record against the VAT.
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Tea Party Holding Republicans Back
Tweet Share on Facebook May 28, 2010 Comment (26)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder argues today that the much ballyhood Tea Party movement may not be helping the GOP at all and may in fact be hurting it. It's a theme I've been riffing on for a while now, and I make a similar argument in my column in today's edition of U.S. News Weekly. And there are a couple of new polls out today that reinforce what both Ambinder and I are saying.
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Sestak Job Offer Likely Benign, But Questions Remain for White House
Tweet Share on Facebook May 28, 2010 Comment (21)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
About that job that was offered to Rep. Joe Sestak as an inducement to not challenge Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senate primary? Turns out it was all a misunderstanding, or something close to it. [See who supports Sestak.]
On Friday the White House counsel’s office revealed that, working through former President Bill Clinton, Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel had reached out and made a vague offer of an appointment to some kind of unpaid position on a presidential advisory board in exchange for Sestak agreeing not to take on Specter, whom he eventually beat.
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Democrat's Emotional Gulf Oil Spill Testimony Can't Help Obama
Tweet Share on Facebook May 28, 2010 Comment (14)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Following up on my oil spill post of earlier this week, things just keep spinning out of control for the Obama administration. The president jaunted down to the Gulf Coast for his second post-Deepwater Horizon spill visit. The Obama White House is watching public support drop as more voters wonder if he is fiddling while the Gulf Coast burns. But Mr. Obama cannot have been helped by a fellow Democrat, Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-La.), who broke down in tears while trying to read a statement at a House Energy subcommittee meeting yesterday.
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Obama Should Put Biden in Charge of Gulf Oil Spill Cleanup
Tweet Share on Facebook May 28, 2010 Comment (7)By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Yesterday’s Gallup poll shows that a majority of Americans believe the president is doing a “poor or very poor” job of responding to the BP oil leak. He held a press conference yesterday, and today he’s heading to the gulf, which may help.
Here’s an idea: President Obama should appoint the vice president as the top guy in charge of overseeing the Gulf Coast clean-up. Make Joe Biden the Gulf Coast point man--the go-to guy--from now until the end of the administration in 2012. It’s a far better use of Biden’s time than flying to South Africa for the American soccer team’s opening game at the World Cup on June 12, which is his next big assignment. -
Libertarian Cato Blogger Endorses Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal
Tweet Share on Facebook May 28, 2010 Comment (6)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Maybe it's the Rand Paul effect. But the libertarians of the Right, so cowed in recent years by the social conservatives, seem to be finding their voice when it comes to recognizing the civil liberties of gay Americans.
Ted Olson is out in California, lunching with Nancy Reagan and fighting for gay marriage. Antonin Scalia took the side of gay rights activists the other day at the USSC. And, as Congress debates just how (freely, or closeted) gay Americans will serve in the armed forces, the Cato Institute has endorsed a legislative compromise ending the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.
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A Sestak Bribe? What Constitutes a Bribe?
Tweet Share on Facebook May 27, 2010 Comment (15)By Scott Galupo, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Before today, I had no opinion on the relative hunkiness of Jonathan Chait and Michael Kinsley. For the record, in my previous post, I had meant to employ the colloquialism “out-thunk.” My bad.
Now, onto substance: Chait writes: “I've been trying to make people understand that a White House job offer to Joe Sestak could not be a quid pro quo--let alone an illegal quid pro quo--because the quid (Sestak accepts an executive branch job) is identical to the quo (Sestak quits the Pennsylvania primary race.) Maybe you don't believe me.” -
The Tea Party Should Stop Whining and Support a Summer Stimulus
Tweet Share on Facebook May 27, 2010 Comment (15)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
It's really no surprise that we have faux populist movements like the Tea Party in these tough economic times. The polling shows these are white folks, at or near the age of retirement. They have spent a lifetime following the rules (mostly) and sticking money in their 401(k)'s, and watching the government take a bite from each paycheck for Social Security. When the stock market crashed, the US of A didn't give them money--it gave money to the SOBs who caused all the trouble, and caused their retirement funds to tank. Suddenly, the comfortable retirement they had hoped and planned for was gone--gone with a poof, along with tens of thousands of dollars from their savings.
Hey. Wait a minute. I just described me.
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The National Debt is Today's Problem--Not the Future's
Tweet Share on Facebook May 27, 2010 Comment (11)By Brandon Greife, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
They’ve stolen my sales pitch! Worries about the impact of the national debt and deficit have traditionally been framed in terms of future generations. For instance, Barack Obama recently said,
We have an obligation to future generations to address our long-term, structural deficits, which threaten to hobble our economy and leave our children and grandchildren with a mountain of debt.
As a College Republican, that made my spiel easy. Everyone, regardless of political persuasion, seemed to understand that today’s spending was going to have dire impacts on our future. The government’s recent string of poor fiscal decisions has moved up the timetable.
