Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: “I’m not very good at twisting arms. I try to be more verbal and non-threatening.”
(Thanks to TPM Reader RL for the catch.)
Does Wal-Mart’s concession on health care reform give it political cover to fight harder than ever against EFCA?
Some sort of brouhaha at a health care roundtable organized by Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE) at a hospital in Omaha this morning. SEIU claims Johanns’ staff called the police on the union even though the union was invited to participate. We talked to Johanns’ office and they tell us nothing of the sort happened: that hospital security moved union protesters across the street, that the senator’s staff had nothing to do with it, and that union representatives and other reform advocates invited by Johanns participated in the roundtable as planned.
Late Update: Worth noting that the SEIU state director, Jane Kleeb, who is complaining about what happened this morning, is married to Johann’s Democratic opponent from the 2008 campaign, Scott Kleeb.
In trying to gin up claims that President Obama fired an inspector general for political reasons, Republicans look to have backed the wrong horse.
At first, the reports were contradictory. But now we’ve seen multiple reports that Sarah Palin plans to resign her office as governor of Alaska at some point in the very near future. Initially reports suggested only that she wouldn’t run again; quickly followed by reports of an imminent resignation.
More in a moment.
3:26 PM … A few have suggested that she’s resigning to free up time to run for president in 2012. (She would have left office at the end of next year.) But I’m not so sure about that. Generally, when you run for election to a high office it’s understood that you’ll stick around to do the job. Many people run for another office while they’re serving out one term and then resign to take the next job. Obama did that, after all. As did Bush and Clinton before them. But resigning an office just to run for another one leaves you open to a lot of criticism for not fulfilling your commitments. So I’m not certain this is really about freeing up time to run for president full time. And if it is, the wisdom of the move, from her perspective, is questionable.
Local station KTVA in Alaska has this …
Palin announced that she will transfer power to Lt. Governor Sean Parnell. Parnell will be sworn in during the upcoming governor’s picnic in Fairbanks on July 25. An emotionally choked-up Parnell said he plans to keep all state commissioners and continue to pursue a natural gas pipeline.
Palin did not field questions and would not give any indications as to her future plans.
Okay, we’re getting our first indication of what happened. It seems like a colossal sulk on Palin’s part, or perhaps better to say an effort on her part to ingeniously combine anti-liberal media bias agitation with Christianist politics by portraying herself as having been crucified by the liberal media.
Said Palin, according to a reporter at the press conference, “You are naive if you don’t see a full-court press on the national level, picking apart a good point guard.”
More shortly.
3:52 PM … So what happened exactly? As I just mentioned in our editorial chat, this clearly happened so quickly that Palin hasn’t even had a chance to come up with a coherent cover story for her resignation. Some context is probably helpful here, however. Remember that based on the public record, Palin is a wildly unethical public official, guilty at a minimum of numerous instances of abusing her authority as governor. And a lot of very damaging information has come out about her in the last few days — though mainly embarrassing information about her character rather than new evidence of bad acts. I would not be surprised if this latest round of revelations shook something else loose that we haven’t heard about yet.
4:06 PM … Wow. It just gets better and better. Apparently one of Palin’s rationale’s for resigning is that she would not stand by while so many taxpayer dollars were being spent investigating her. This from Politico has to be the best …
Palin allies contend that her star power will still benefit her home state.
“She can be more of a help to Alaska from the outside now,” said one Palin loyalist.
Now?
4:20 PM … Hmmm. Even better. This is Gov. Palin’s ‘announcement‘, such as it is, on Twitter …
We’ll soon attach info on decision to not seek re-election… this is in Alaska’s best interest, my family’s happy… it is good, stay tuned
She apparently didn’t realize she was resigning yet. Stuff obviously moving pretty quickly …
Andrea Mitchell says sources close to Gov. Palin say she is now “out of politics for good.”
Here’s the transcript of Gov. Palin’s rambling resignation statement.