Is Bill Clinton Thowing Obama Under The Bus?

Is it at all possible for the president who largely got where he is by expediently throwing people 'under the bus' who become a liability for him or are no longer useful, himself feeling what it's like to be so thoroughly discarded and betrayed? (Make no mistake, that list of who has gotten thrown under the bus by Obama esta largisimo.) Link

I first started considering the possibility that Obama was being thrown under the bus by Clinton a couple of days ago when Bubba said the following in an interview on CNN when asked abou republican candidate Mitt Romney...

"I think he (Romney) had a good business career. If you go in and you try to save a failing company, and you and I have friends here who invest in companies, you can invest in a company, run up the debt, loot it, sell all the assets, and force all the people to lose their retirement and fire them. Or you can go into a company, have cutbacks, try to make it more productive with the purpose of saving it. When you try, like anything else you try, you don't always succeed. I don't think that we ought to get into the position where we say this is bad work. This is good work. There's no question that getting up and going to the office and basically performing the essential functions of the office, a man who's been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold."

I was a bit amazed by this coming from Clinton, but then I heard former Clinton advisor Dick Morris state the following last night...

"...I’ve spoken to several good friends who are staunch conservatives who have had exchanges with Bill Clinton in private,’ Morris told Fox News’s Sean Hannity, ‘and at one point one of them quotes him as saying, “You have six months to save the country”…"

I really don't think Morris is lying here. What would he have to gain (personally) by doing so? Perhaps Clinton is actually seeing Obama for the complete disaster he is for religious freedom, free speech, representative democracy, race relations, the economy and the treatment of women that he actually is.

Romney: On jobs, where's Obama?

Republican front-runner for 2012 Mitt Romney criticized President Obama earlier this week when he pointed out...

"President Obama didn't cause the recession, but he made it worse and caused it to last longer. From the outset, he inaugurated the most anti-investment, anti-business, anti-jobs policies we have seen since Jimmy Carter. Further, the White House has still not crafted any discernible plan to put Americans back to work. Creating good, lasting jobs will require the following:

•A tax policy that rewards savings, investment, entrepreneurial risk-taking and exports.

•Free, open and fair access to foreign markets, with a focus on constructive trade reform with China.

•Elimination of the federal bureaucratic and regulatory stranglehold on business.

•A market-driven energy policy that encourages investment in America and reduces our dependence on foreign oil.

•A commitment to fiscal responsibility through budget restraints and entitlement reform."

All of these above steps are needed if we are to stave off the upcoming economic disaster. You know things are getting pretty bad when fairly non-partisan Congressional Budget Office tells you that they "can’t conceive of any way in which the economy can continue past the year 2037 because of debt burdens" Link

Romney's campaign was the unexpected recipient of an unexpected gift from 2008 Republican runner-up to the nomination, Mike Huckabee who it seems, is also testing the waters for 2012. Quote...

"As you'll remember, in early January 2007, as his tenure as governor ran out, Huckabee ordered his staff to electronically wipe and then crush the hard drives of almost 100 laptop and desktop computers in the governor's office (soon after taking office, incoming governor Mike Beebe had to allocate $335,000 from his operating fund to buy new hard drives and computers to replace those crushed by his successor). At the time, Huckabee said that the decision to crush the hard drives was made in order to protect the privacy of those who had personal information on the drives. Critics, however, recalled that early in Huckabee's term as governor, documents, e-mails and memos stored on hard drives just like the ones that were destroyed formed the basis of embarrassing stories about Huckabee, including a 1998 story in the Arkansas Times detailing how Huckabee and his family were using the $60,000-a-year Governor's Mansion fund as their personal piggy bank. As revealed in documents provided to the Times by a former governor's office employee, the Huckabee family had used the mansion fund — which was supposed to be used only for purchases related to official state business — to buy everything from pantyhose and dog houses to meals out and loaves of Velveeta cheese."

It's shaping up to be an interesting election season folks.

Better Late Than Never

The American Spectator arrives at the same conclusion that I did in 2008.

"A Gallup poll released this week showed a wide-open Republican field. Romney led the pack at 19 percent, with Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee at 16 percent, Newt Gingrich at 13 percent, and all other candidates in the single digits.

While Palin remains the biggest GOP star and has a passionate following, when you get beyond her core supporters, voters are deeply skeptical of her ability to be president. An ABC News/Washington Post poll taken last month found that even conservatives are divided -- with just 45 percent saying she's qualified to be the nation's top executive and 48 percent saying she isn't. Tea Party supporters are split 48 percent to 48 percent on the question. Meanwhile, among the public at large, just 27 percent view her as qualified compared with 67 percent who say she isn't. Were Palin to run, she'd have to prove that she could build a functioning national political operation and translate her celebrity into actual votes beyond her fan base.

When Huckabee ran the last time around, he built a strong campaign on a shoestring budget with little name recognition, but he had trouble competing in states that did not have a critical mass of evangelical voters. And national security and economic conservatives distrusted him. Were he to make a second bid for president, in addition to these obstacles, Huckabee's penchant for pardoning criminals as governor of Arkansas would come under added scrutiny given that he commuted the sentence of Maurice Clemmons, who in 2009 was suspected of killing four cops in Washington state.

Gingrich, who in the past has exploited speculation about his presidential ambitions to promote himself and his books, may actually decide to run this time. But while he's respected in some quarters for being a one man idea factory, he's rankled many grassroots conservatives for such decisions as recording a television ad with Nancy Pelosi demanding action on climate change and endorsing liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava over conservative Doug Hoffman in a well-publicized special election, allying himself with the GOP establishment. Should he run for president, he'll also carry a ton of personal baggage that he'll be seriously questioned about for the first time since the late 1990s.

The list goes on and on. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty will enter the race with lower name recognition than his rivals and a sense that he's too boring to be president. His rightward shift over the past few years will also open him up to charges of being a flip flopper. Over the past several months, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels has managed to anger key constituencies of the conservative movement by calling for a "truce" on social issues, saying that defense cuts had to be on the table, and flirting with a value added tax. At a time of unprecedented anti-Washington sentiment, it's hard to see Republicans rally around a lobbyist in Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour."

Back in 2008, I forced myself to become quite pragmatic over what was then the current crop of presidential nominees and I concluded that on net balance, Romney was probably the best candidate out of all of them. Of both parties. Although far from being anywhere near the perfect candidate, at least Romney had accomplished something in life and helped turn around failing, money-losing businesses for a living before being elected governor of Massachusetts. Guiliani? Too much personal baggage and his type of so-called conservatism doesn't play well west of the Hudson River. Fred Thompson? Good, but uninspiring. One commntator noted that it seemed he was walking for the nomination rather than running for it. Mike Huckabee? Too many pardons of hardened criminals while governor of Arkansas. McCain? Wrong on immigration, cap and trade and a whole host of other issues as well. We all see what a disaster his campaign turned out to be.

Yet Romney, despite some baggage of his own, seemed to be the best out of the entire lot. Although he had some dalliances with policies that skewed to the left, I do not question his patriotism or that he would throw the US under the bus. I cannot say the same for our Kenyan-American president.

Who do you think is presidential material for 2012? Post your thoughts here.

P.S. I just realized something. If I were to follow the patented Whateverman System of Logical Argumentation, I would have to conclude that the reason that Romney didn't get the nomination in '08 was due to bigotry because of his non-traditonal religion (Mormonism) and it couldn't possibly have anything to do with policy differences. B-b-b-b-bigots!