It looks like Sean Hannity is involved in making sure Obama loses this election–despite calling his show the “Stop Hillary Express” you can easily figure out that he would rather her win than Senator Obama. Andrew Sullivan brought up the speculation that George Stephanopoulos conspired with Sean Hannity and the rest of the “Right Wing Conspiracy” to bring down Hillary Clinton.
The Daily Kos says that Stephanopoulos was corresponding with FOX News and Newsmax reporters\hosts yesterday and maybe even earlier.
Second, at National Review’s The Corner, Mark Hemingway had a reader e-mail him this comment:
You can thank Sean Hannity for that question. Steph was on his show yesterday and Sean really hammered the point that no one in the media had asked Obama about Ayers. Stephy said he was writing down all the info Sean gave him.
It looks like Stephanopoulos will not be called “Judas” by James Carville after this is over. Instead, if Clinton wins, I suspect a big “Well done, good and faithful servant”.
Filed under: Politics
I think all people involved are consenting adults. George only will take from Sean what he wants to take. Obama handling it all badly; he too is a consenting adult and has to accept personal responsibility for a poor performance no matter what the questions were. I know; I’m a hopeless throwback)
I agree. This isn’t some vast Fox conspiracy. George wanted to make a show of it just like any other journalist, and he did. So what if he took one of Sean’s ideas? You think everything they say is completely original?
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I agree Obama should be asked the questions, but Hillary is basically getting a free ride.
I give up, I’m not voting….1st time in 50 years!
This explains everything…
The one that angered me the most was the badgering about tax policy. Like some middle-schooler demanding that someone promise to be their best friend forever, Charles Gibson kept demanding yes or no answers on hypothetical tax policy questions based on arbitrary income levels. Senator Clinton actually gave an answer that made sense (first one I’ve heard yet) when she tried to explain that you have to make those decisions based on the facts at the time. Senator Obama tried to make the point that we do need to start paying for our government. (The first step in whittling it down a bit, if we found ourselves paying for it in real time, we might put a little more pressure on our legislature to get spending under control.) Gibson would have none of it, he practically shouted them down and continued with his demands for deinitive answers to his simplistic constructs.
Let’s not forget which pithy catchphrase that got Bill Clinton elected in 1992. No, it was not “It’s the economy, Stupid!”. It was “Read my lips…” Raising taxes when circumstances dictated was one of only two acts of politcal courage GHW Bush committed in those 4 years. (The other was refusing to let anyone in his administration dance on the Soviet Union’s grave.) He didn’t lose the election because he raised taxes; he lost the election because he did it after making a rash promise not to.
About the same time, Jim Florio became a 1-term governor in NJ because prior to his election he said he “saw no reason to raise taxes”. The Governor was a Congressman at the time. Had he been in Trenton instead of Washington, he might have known that Tom Kean (yes, the 9-11 Commission Chair) had pushed through a trick budget the year before, deferring many expenses to the next year, AFTER the election, in an attempt to sway the election in favor of Ray Sandman, the Red candidate. It’s Joisey, that happens.
Well, Governor Florio got into office the next January, took a look at the books and said “oh poopy” or something like that. He realized there was not enough fat to trim to get himself out of the hole Governor Kean had left him. He trimmed what he could & raised taxes to cover the rest. (Deficit spending is not an option for most, if not all, states.) He spent his term in “foxhole” mode and lost the next election to Christie Todd Whitman, who promised to cut income tax rates by 10%. She did, and in the wake of that everyone’s property taxes skyrocketed.
I just want to hear a politician tell me that (s)he will be a careful steward of my tax dollars. I’m willing to pay my fair share. If there is a crisis, like a war to defend our shores, I’ll suck it up and kick in some more. Too many people today have turned conservatism on it’s head. They think it’s about low taxation. Conservatism is about preserving freedom, which is accomplished through small government. Low taxes are an ancillary benefit of small government. People who obsess over low taxes aren’t conservative, they’re stingy.
There’s still no Free Lunch.
I like Lamont’s analysis. My main concern is that there *is a whopping huge free lunch* for Corporations, even on the state level, where the largest of them expects to receive tax discounts.
In some cases (Walmart, for instance) the business collects sales tax and *gets to keep it*, meaning that the citizen is double-dipped – we pay at the register AND we pay again when there’s no money to maintain infrastructure.
If the governments, state, local, federal, would reverse this trend, they wouldn’t need to be nearly as careful with my money. I’d be saving some 30% +.
Stephanopoulos – a journalist?
Now THAT is a funny thought.