Now that the Illinois State Senate has done its duty and rid the state of the onerous presence of its vilified governor, exercising the “nuclear option” of preventing him from ever holding office in the state again, what happens next? Lots of people probably wonder where he goes, what he does next, when will he come to trial, how does the state recover and all kinds of stuff like that. Not me. What I wanna know is, what happens if he’s never officially indicted; if come April, when U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s extension to file charges is up, none are forthcoming? What happens then? Oooops?
Since the Illinois Senate has gone out of its way to make the case that theirs is a political process and not a criminal one, one wonders, too, on what grounds was Blagojevich really impeached? The media harps on the alleged attempt to sell President Black Obama’s vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder, but Blago has not been indicted for that crime, and Fitzgerald made it clear that he was being arrested to prevent that from happening. The official charges in Fitzgerald’s complaint were mail and wire fraud and solicitation of bribery, so without indicting the people/person Blagojevich conspired with, and sent money to, or, received money from, where’s the crime?
On CNN earlier today, immediately after the vote went down, Wolf Blitzer asked Illinois resident reporters Roland Martin and Don Lemon to weigh in. Now, I have no love for either man, Roland’s over-the-top Soul Brother manlove for Black Obama renders most things out his mouth stupid, and Lemon’s rush-to-exonerate interview with Jesse Jackson Jr. after he was identified as Candidate Number 5, the likeliest co-conspirator in the Blagojevich complaint, undermined his objectivity pretty completely. Yet, both men opined that the impeachment of Blagojevich was more the result of the Illinois legislature’s dislike of, and ongoing disagreement with, him, than of his legal troubles.
This assertion was forcefully and immediately countered by resident Democratic strategist (hack) Paul Begala, whose Obama man crush makes Martin’s look like a vendetta, and for whom I have even less use. Begala’s rah-rah Obaba act is sooooo intense that it makes you wonder if his primary support for Hillary Clinton was as a Patti Solis-Doyle-esque mole, planted in the inner circle to destroy her chances from within. His doofy-goofy gushing sucking up has me convinced that when looking up his name in the dictionary, one would find his picture next to the definition “see Ted Haggard.” And CNN’s other turncoat Clinton supporting “strategist,” Judas Carville, is equally annoying with his “cardboard groping Hillary’s tit is a harmless prank when Obie’s boyz do it,” Obama fluffing shtick. Anyway, Carville-lite jumped in and asserted that Blagojevich’s alleged attempt to sell the object of Begala’s love’s Senate seat and shake down a children’s hospital showed conclusively that Blago was not only a criminal, but a scum sucking sinner.
This is worrisome because Blagojevich has not been indicted for anything, let alone convicted, so Begala’s vehemently defending his impeachment on those grounds is unsupportable. More worrisome is the fact that Begala gets his talking points straight from the White House via his longstanding tradition of daily early morning conference calls with Rahm Emanuel, a practice reported by Politico and decried by News Busters. From Politico:
Under other circumstances, the morning calls between Emanuel, Carville, Stephanopoulos and Begala — pollster Stan Greenberg is another frequent member of the core group, a kind of “fifth Beatle” — might be a Society of Has-Beens, reliving ancient glories from the Little Rock “War Room.”
It was Emanuel’s ascension into Barack Obama’s inner circle — even as Carville and Begala remained closely linked with the defeated Clinton political machine — that saved the group from irrelevance.
The calls “are about what’s happening, what the implications are of what’s happening and what’s going on,” said Emanuel.
edit
Stephanopoulos’ role is as the analyst and the skeptic. “George is really a big-systems thinker,” Begala said. “As a journalist, he is half of a political scientist, and because he’s not in the partisan battles anymore, he sees things differently.”
Begala offers the most academic interpretation of the calls and their daily survey of political news.
Emanuel is the most likely to be talking policy, usually some program Democrats can use to score points in the daily partisan brawl with Republicans.
edit
Begala’s own interest, as a former speechwriter, is in rhetoric — what is likely to be the sound bite that will echo through the news cycle.
Carville is the wild card, “a genius,” in Begala’s view, “who can look at the same operative facts as everyone else and come to a different conclusion.”
Like News Busters, I find this practice deeply troubling in general, but in the case of Blagojevich’s CNN coverage, such complicity is especially egregious, given the lazy copy cat, follow-the-leader nature of the media nowadays. Rahm Emanuel has been interviewed by the Feds in this case, for goodness sake! Blagojevich has repeatedly demanded to call him specifically as a witness in his defense, and this guy is giving talking points to the prosecutors in the court of public opinion case against him? Straight from the president’s mouth, perhaps?
No wonder Blagojevich felt that going straight-to-video was his only option. With the entire news media being covered with government issue Astroturf, what chance did he have against a political process administered by a tribunal of sworn enemies allied with his potential co-conspirator? And, if President Black Obama, the Obamessiah with the power to heal or hurt by the mere laying on of hands, who was also interviewed by the Feds with lawyer present, had a hand in offering up the Senate seat in question for any reason, what better way to cover everybody’s ass than have your Chief of Staff issue daily marching orders to your street crew?
Maybe Blago’s right; if they can do this to a governor…
Rod Blagojvich will never be charged. He knows too much and to have a real trial would put too many Chicago/Washington DC people in the limelight. BHO does not want that so all charges will be dropped and Fitz will find some excuse why he can proceed!!!!!
IR, non-issue.
Thanks Cinie, for the post. I agree with you completely on the above.
I have always felt that Fitzgerald was sicced on to Blagojevich by the Obama crowd for two reasons. One, to show underlings that they do not mess with the Messiah and two, to divert attention from others closer to Obama.
If Patrick Fitzgerald doesn’t come up with some strong evidence to support his actions and arrest and indict whoever Blago was supposed to be making a deal with then he should be prosecuted himself for malfeasance in office. If Blago’s life was ruined this fast to promote Fitzgeralds self-interest – there should be a special place in hell for him. If he was just playing footsie with the Obama interests to preserve his own position (IMO) he is just as bad as they are.
Scooter Libby was the scapegoat for the Republicans, being the only one Fitzgerald went after in the Plame outing, although Robert Novack and others were just as culpable. Once he convicted Libby, he dropped everyone else.
Rod Blagojevich is the scapegoat for the crooked Chicago Democrats and the Obama crowd and I’d be willing to bet that now that he has been destroyed, Fitzgerald will lose interest in prosecuting anyone else.
Lawsuit filed claiming Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is constitutionally ineligible to serve
There were serious questions about the constitutional eligibility of Hillary Clinton to serve as secretary of State. The issue arises from a vote held to raise the Secretary of States salary. Senator Hillary Clinton voted for this increase. The Constitution forbids members of the Senate from being appointed to civil office, such as the Secretary of State, if the “emoluments,” or salary and benefits, of the office were increased during the Senator’s term.
Blago was the fall guy this year. He took the heat for “politics as usual” in Chicago. In order to spare the Messiah from doing so.
I hope he gets a plum job… like the one Jerry Springer got… after he was disgraced in my home town.
Now that Oprah has left Chicago to be near “The One” … there might be a position as talking head there, eh?
From the start, I thought, without a doubt, that Blago wouldn’t be governor anymore when his impeachment trial ended. If that means “the fix was in,” as Blago likes to say, then perhaps it was. But I still wish he would’ve mounted a defense instead of telling people he wasn’t allowed to, because the rules did allow for it. By not defending himself during the trial (save for that impassioned plea at the end), he just gave people another reason not to believe him, fairly or unfairly.
Craig, I too have followed the trial and circus, and even linked to the 13 articles of impeachment against Blags in the post above. However, I believe that had he not been arrested, he never would have been impeached. This was clearly an opportunistic politically motivated power grab. Blago is a political liability and there doesn’t seem to be much to indicate that his successor and their company will be inherently more competent and less corrupt. They might be slicker, but it remains to be seen if any of them are strictly on the up and up. BTW, I checked out your blog, keep up the good work. It bears remembering though, that the Blagodrama has played out on 2 levels, national and local, and the implications are not necessarily parallel. And, do you really think that had Blagojevich mounted a defense he would have prevailed, guilty or not?
Here are some facts about Blagojevich’s impeachment as I see them:
1) Lawmakers looked the other way as Blago abused his gubernatorial powers, but decided to finally impeach him after he became a political liability to them when he was accused of trying to sell Obama’s vacated Senate seat. There were rumblings of impeachment before that, but they became serious after Blago’s arrest.
2) If Blago only faced impeachment on the accusations of criminality charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he probably wouldn’t have been impeached. I think the other impeachment articles regarding his abuse of power (gross mishandling of state funds, etc.) are what made the impeachment happen.
3) A lot of people are not well-informed about the impeachment process and the charges against Blagojevich because the national media covered the proceedings in a grossly incomplete manner. They think it’s a big joke, but it isn’t to those of us who live in Illinois. Local media did a much more complete job of providing all the facts, including that Blagojevich did have a chance to cross-examine witnesses and call his own to the stand, but he chose to ignore two deadlines to submit lists of potential witnesses, and he boycotted his trial until the last day, in favor of going on a national media tour to mislead thousands of people.
I have watched the Blagojevich scandal closely and have been blogging about it at length since his arrest. If you are interested in reading more about what was going on that never got mentioned on CNN or any of the other national media outlets, I urge you to check out my blog at http://www.breadline.wordpress.com.