So I come across an article on the Hill where Darell Issa is calling the Sestak scandal Obama's "Watergate." He says, "This may be the way business is done in Chicago, but it’s not the way things are done in our nation’s capitol [sic] and I am intent on getting to the bottom of this..."
Add that to the 7 GOPers on the Senate Judiciary Committee asking AG Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to look into the matter, and it's enough to scare our lot and give us all flashbacks of the Clinton presidency mired in gridlock because of trifling political attacks like this, especially when the GOP controlled congress... You know this is where they are going with this.
And to this, we all need to regroup and remember who the enemy here really is. They just reminded us again.
And this time, we must not let the 90s happen all over again.
Update 3: Just a few quick edits (the wording of the Sestak/WH blame - not my intention to twist it so I tried to change it to be as neutral as possible to lessen the distraction) and other quick additions; I especially wanted to highlight the 2nd update which I think deserves to be bumped up on this diary, from a comment by mydailydrunk:
Also thanks to mydailydrunk for the link to mediamatters highlighting this new angle (MVP of this thread so far): Does "Reagan conservative" Hannity think Reagan should have been impeached for reported job offer?
This isn't for Robert Gibbs or the administration to bring up or pass around, but I do think this is the MSM's responsibility to bring up to anyone like Sean "Mr. Reagan Conservative" Hannity and other GOP leaders who insist on making much noise about this...
We can help push the media along by contacting them to make them aware of the story so they can ask Issa and his cronies whether they think Reagan should have been impeached for doing the exact same thing.
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I know we've all had our differences here as of late, but TomP put it best in a recent diary, and I will just plagiarize him since I can't say it any better.
...For progressive change to happen, we need everyone we can get to fight for it. Barack Obama may be too centrist for some of us, including me, at times, but we need to be together in fighting the Republicans.
There needs to be room for policy criticism that does not divide unnecessarily. Both "sides" of this divide need to work together.
To the left I say, Obama is the most progressive president since LBJ. I wish he were more left and more transformative, but we have sufferred through so many that were much to his right. He is far better than Clinton or Carter, in my view.
To those who are self selected "defenders of Obama", cut people some slack. There has to be room to disagree and still be part of a coalition.
Because if we destroy each other, then people like Corker will prevail.
Putting aside whose fault this was - whether it was Sestak for helping start us off down this road in the first place, or the White House for allegedly offering him a job which would have taken him out of the PA-Sen Democratic primary - let's just note that this isht happens all the time in politics. Nobody makes a peep about it from either side because usually there are more pressing things to worry about and score political points on like oh, financial reform or a f@#^ing cataclysmic oil spill... The fact that Issa and his ilk are choosing to focus on this tells me that they are in this to distract the American public from real issues - because he knows the GOP will be shown to be on the wrong side on those.
By the way, if Issa was really serious about this, Mike Madden of Salon points out that he would have started Obama's impeachment proceedings when Obama offered Judd Gregg a job:
The zeal that Rep. Darrell Issa has brought to his pursuit of the allegations that the White House dangled some kind of job in front of Joe Sestak last year while they were trying to muscle him out of the Pennsylvania Senate primary is impressive, if also a little amusing. Issa, the ranking Republican on the House Oversight Committee, has been thundering about an alleged bribe, using scary words like "impeachable," "crime" and "ethics complaint." (Actually, considering how rarely the House Ethics Committee can be roused to do anything about lawmakers, that last one isn't so scary.)
But as Alex Pareene has already noted, this isn't exactly the first time someone in politics cut a deal for a job. When Sen. Judd Gregg was going to leave Congress to join the Obama administration -- which, in the end, he didn't do, because he realized he disagreed with everything President Obama stands for -- he wasn't going to take the appointment to become commerce secretary unless his replacement in New Hampshire's Senate seat would caucus with the GOP.
So Salon asked Issa's office what, exactly, the difference between the two situations is. At first, Issa's staff insisted they were nothing alike. "That never happened, at the end of the day," Issa spokesman Kurt Bardella said of the Gregg appointment quid pro quo. "It never played out..."
Later in the article, Madden gets Bardella to admit Sestak-gate was just as bad as Gregg-gate, and perhaps they might have pursued Obama just as doggedly... But let's not kid ourselves. We all know they wouldn't have.
I've had it with these hypocritical opportunistic nutjobs who are constantly on the lookout to try and impeach whatever Democratic president we have on something trivial, and yet bristle when someone suggested that we appoint a special prosecutor on the torture memos (again - more important to Americans)... Anything to derail discussing the progressive agenda and to distract the public from the issues at hand. Because all that really matters to them is that they take America back from the scary socialists led by that black guy.
So I say instead of being defensive, we need to fight back. Now. We need to keep congress away from these loons for as long as we can.
For each day they pursue this with a vengeance, let's give to the Democratic candidates of your choice. Every time they bring up impeachment, donate. Every time they bring up a special prosecutor for this while staying mum on David Vitter's indiscretions or the Bush administration's torture memos, donate. I won't say who you should give your money to, but I'm pretty sure you all have someone running this November that you love, and every little bit helps against the corporate-backed GOP.
Admittedly I am a newb at posting action links so I defer to the community. Post these in the comments. I've heard you all talk about Act Blue, yes? And dailykos's Orange to Blue page.
I point you to horizontalrule's diary on keeping the Senate majorly blue, which has a plethora of action links for all our Senatorial candidates.
We need to get angry about this, not defensive. These bastards are threatening to bog down our congress even more with bullshyte like this - bringing down the level of discourse to the depths of smut, and we cannot f&%king afford this right now.
Obligatory "Thanks for putting me on the Rec List" Update: Thank you kind sirs and ma'ams. Went to bed last night a bit disappointed people wanting to turn this into another pie fight, so I woke up this morning pleasantly surprised to find a lot more people in agreement than I thought would be here.
Just a couple of quick thoughts.
To those who say they can't support this president because of issues that they believe he handled wrongly, I am not trying to convince you of his actions otherwise. I'm trying to convince you to see that the GOP will be attempting to distract the country from the important issues you hold dear by using crap like this and using it to stall any chance of a more progressive agenda coming forward. So find a Democratic (or Republican, if you can find one) progressive candidate that you like and help them get to/stay in congress this November. If you think that nothing we do this November will help change the corporatist Bush-like president we now have in office - I'd like to point you to the DADT repeal, which was not on the president's agenda until next year after the DoD review, but his hand was forced by progressives in congress. If you still can't see that having more progressives in congress can make a difference after that, then you're likely not the type progressives can really count on in the end anyway and I wish you good luck in your endeavors.
To those who discouraged by those trying to turn this into another pie fight, please don't be. I was one who was already starting to get turned off and was about to follow the path of those like gchaucer2 in taking a break - but this opened my eyes. Those bastards on the other side will gladly take our discouragement (is that a word? Too early in the morning for me to think clearly) and use it to stop any sort of progress we can make.
I refuse to get distracted by another Does-Obama-Deserve-Our-Help discussion. This isn't about Obama. This is about us not letting unserious people getting back in power to govern.
Again, if someone here can't find a progressive they can support to show they won't stand for wastes of time like this in a time when we can't afford it, then they would not be counted on anyway.
Also, mediamatters did some more research on this (hat tip to Auriandra), and surprise surprise, Morris fabricates "impeachable offense" out of alleged Sestak job offer. These guys have no flippin' shame.
Update 2: Sorry, I know this doesn't have anything to do with this case, and is not something the administration or Sestak should use in defending anything that might have happened, but had to share this (hat tip to mydailydrunk):
This is the stuff that we can use to show how much of a waste of time and money this is though.