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Is Barack Obama Tainted by the Rod Blagojevich Scandal?
Politics Daily —
... Politico sees the scandal as presenting Obama with potential problems for some time to come, largely because the story and its innuendo will be kept alive by his political enemies. Here's the salient bit from their piece "In scandal, risks for Obama": ...
POLITICO: In Scandal, Risks for Obama. Gee, do you think?…
Instapundit —
POLITICO: In Scandal, Risks for Obama. Gee, do you think?
The Early Word: Blagojevich Fallout
The Caucus —
... , the Politico’s Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin note there are still real risks for Mr. Obama and his team: Legal bills, off-message headlines, and a sustained attempt by Republicans to show that Obama is more a product of Illinois’s malfeasance-prone political culture than he is letting on—all are likely if the Blagojevich case goes to trial or becomes an extended affair. Obama and his aides have so far mounted a tight-lipped defense, publicly distancing themselves from Blagojevich’s alleged plans to profit personally from his power to fill Obama’s newly vacant Senate seat ...
Of Fools and Folly
Comments from Left Field —
... How much you wanna bet that the only reason Jonathan Martin and Ben Smith cobbled together this rickety structure of baseless speculation about Obama and the potential (yes, potential) scandal that might (yes, might) arise (passive voice!) for the President-elect and certain members of his team, following yesterday’s ...
Republicans Demand Obama Say He Wants Fitzgerald To Stay -- Even Though He Already Has
TPM Election Central —
... In an interview published today by Politico, Illinois state Republican chair Andy McKenna, demanded that Obama say whether he favors keeping Fitzgerald in his post. "Some have wondered if Barack Obama would keep Fitzgerald," McKenna said. "It would be great if he confirms that he plans to." ...
SOS Obama: this is not the Blago I thought I never, ever knew
Cold Fury —
... Obama and his team didn’t at least have some knowledge of these goings-on ought to be in some sort of home. You don’t get as far as Obama did in Chicago without having splashed around in this sort of sewage quite a bit. “A new kind of politics?” Yeah, right, fool. Tell me another one. Obama was never anything but a greedy, grubby hack, albeit a fairly slick one — which last is not a compliment. Now maybe everyone else will have the chance to figure that out, even with the Obamedia spinning furiously to try keep any of this from tainting the Lyin’ Messiah. Everyone whose ...
Jesse Jackson Jr. Believed to be Senate Candidate 5
Taylor Marsh —
... However, that’s not the story being spun right now. The Politico is up to the usual guilt by association tricks with headlines and story lines like this: "Big risks for Obama in Blago scandal." According to whom? Barack Obama is nowhere in the Blago complaint. The only relationship is that Obama is from Chicago. Guilt by association is what traditional media loves to whip up, so considering Politico was started by two traditional reporters it’s fitting that one of the first headlines to come out is Obama’s connection to... Blago? No, to Chicago. ...
Transition News 12/10
The Stump —
... Politico says the Blago scandal
is a "stink bomb" for
Obama.
...
Obama And Blagojevich: Did You Know?
Daily Kos —
... dust off the guilt by association skills they honed during the recent presidential campaign, there is an aspect of the Rod Blagojevich ...
Fitzgerald's future
Political Animal —
... : Mr. Fitzgerald has said nothing about his future as Barack Obama prepares to assume the presidency, often an occasion for turnover among United States attorneys. But Senator Richard J. Durbin, the senior senator from Illinois and a Democrat, has publicly called on Mr. Obama to keep Mr. Fitzgerald on, and the betting is that he will remain in the job. And the Politico : [T]here is the question of Fitzgerald's future . Presidents can appoint their own U.S. Attorneys, but Republicans aim to all but dare Obama to remove the crusading Fitzgerald before he's done cleaning out ...
Patrick Fitzgerald is doing great where he is.
RedState: Conservative News and Community —
... Most of the thoughts in this Politico article - “Big risks for Obama in Blago scandal” - are already familiar to our readers, so I won’t review the article’s content beyond the basics: the danger for the new administration is not that they end up being directly implicated in dirty Illinois politics, but that they get associated with it. We’re already seeing a certain amount of public contradictions on just how much Obama and Blagojevich discussed the former’s replacement; and there’s going to be more of that. This is going to ...
Blagojevich and that 'culture of corruption'
Crooks and Liars —
... ? Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin at Politico have one of the only rational assessments of the risks Obama faces. The key point they raise is that the situation warrants keeping U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in his seat for the time being -- and we strongly agree.
Make It Stop
Balloon Juice —
At Memeorandum, the following sensational headlines:
In scandal, risks for Obama
Analysis: Scandal threatens to dog Obama
Questions Arise About the Obama/Blagojevich Relationship
For the life of me, I can’t figure out why these are all threats to Obama, especially since Fitzgerald said Obama had nothing to do with it in the first place:
Fitzgerald said there was “no reference in the complaint’ to the president-elect and cautioned the press to “not cast aspersions on ...
12/11: Everybody's Talkin'
Blogometer —
... except appreciation" for appointing Obama's preferred candidate ( Valerie Jarrett ) to the vacant IL Senate seat. However, righty bloggers want more details about how Obama's preference was communicated to Blagojevich. Jim Geraghty asks: "Was 'you'll get appreciation and that's it' the immediate response? Or was Blago's request for a cabinet post or other rewards contemplated for a while?" Liberal bloggers, meanwhile, are angry about the multitude of news reports suggesting that the Blagojevich scandal is somehow damaging to Obama. They ...
