American Crossroads
In Illinois, Democrat Gov. Pat Quinn’s patronage hiring and scandal-ridden anti-violence initiative have led voters to identify his Republican challenger as a much-needed “reform candidate.”
But Quinn hasn’t stopped adding to his list of failures. [Read more…]
CNN broke the news yesterday that embattled Washington, D.C. insider Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) spent more than $3,200 in taxpayer dollars to fly on a private jet to attend her campaign fundraiser last fall.
If asked whom they consider “coal’s public enemy No. 1,” it is probably safe to say that most West Virginia voters would say Barack Obama. [Read more…]
The political world is abuzz with Hillary Clinton’s comments to Jeffery Goldberg criticizing the Obama Administration – for which she was the top diplomat – for not acting sooner to arm the protestors against Assad in Syria. Here are those comments:
The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad—there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle—the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,
But in 2012, Clinton vociferously defended the Administration’s decision not to arm the rebels, going so far as to claim that doing so was impractical and might help al-Qaeda. Watch.
In that CBS piece she’s painted among the more reticent to engage. Here are her full 2012 comments:
What are we going to arm them with and against what? We’re not going to bring tanks over the borders of Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan,” Clinton said..
“We know al Qaeda [leader Ayman al-] Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria. Are we supporting al Qaeda in Syria? Hamas is now supporting the opposition. Are we supporting Hamas in Syria?” Clinton said. “If you’re a military planner or if you’re a secretary of state and you’re trying to figure out do you have the elements of an opposition that is actually viable, that we don’t see.”
White House officials told the New York Times today that this echoed her private views:
At the time of the Obama administration’s internal debate over that decision, several officials said, Mrs. Clinton’s advocacy was far less thunderous:
So how do you explain Clinton basically calling the prospect of arming the rebels idiotic in 2012 with her argument today outside of naked political opportunism?
As Hillary Clinton toured Europe to promote her book Hard Choices, the U.S. government spent more than $55,000 on Clinton’s European book tour. A recent report by the Daily Mail details the luxury hotels that Clinton’s entourage stayed at in the cosmopolitan capitals of Europe, like Paris and Berlin.
At a Friday event in Corvallis, OR, Sen. Jeff Merkley is asked why he opposes a balanced budget amendment. Merkley refused to answer if he thinks we need a balanced budget as a nation.
Mike Morrell, a former deputy CIA director and part of a firm featuring close Clinton allies like Philippe Reines, recently sided with Obama on arming rebels in Syria over Hillary Clinton.
In an interview on CBS’ This Morning, Morrell said:
It is difficult for me to see how arming the moderate rebels would have made that much difference in Syria. We would have had to have done it on a very, very large scale that I think would have frightened our partners in the region because it would have put a very, very large footprint, U.S. footprint on the ground in the Middle East.
Hillary’s comments on Syria are widely seen as a transparent attempt to distance herself from an Obama foreign policy that she’s inextricably tied to. Morrell’s response shows that she’s not going to get a free pass to make a nakedly political move.
Morrell’s challenge to Clinton’s position is all the more interesting considering hints that he may join a future Clinton Presidential campaign.
The Daily Beast reports that a Democrat running for a judicial seat in Connecticut is married to an acknowledged white supremacist.
Robert Freeman wrote on his blog that he “wants to establish whites-only towns, employing individuals from other cultures and races as spies in an agenda to shape America in his image,” [Read more…]
North Carolina Democrat Kay Hagan stopped her event when she spotted a video tracker. This painfully awkward interaction happened Friday in Jacksonville, NC. Watch as Hagan looks directly at the camera, stops her talk, and tells a staffer to ask the tracker to leave. [Read more…]
In a classic case of hitting “reply” instead of “forward,” a Cory Booker staffer sent an email to Booker’s GOP opponent, Jeff Bell, which said, “JEFF BELL CAN SUCK IT.”
The staffer, Nichole Sessego, did not specify what she meant by “it,” but folks are drawing their own conclusions. [Read more…]