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Tag Archives: Reince Priebus

It’s all about the emails – or, if you’re Jared Kushner, not so much

25 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by willykay in Uncategorized

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Ann Wagner, Billy Long, Emails, Jared Kushner, Mike Pence, missouri, Reince Priebus, Roy Blunt, Steve Bannon

I’m willing to bet that you remember all about Hillary Clinton and her email. And most of you remember that despite several “investigations” by Congress and the FBI nobody could substantiate claims that she did anything untoward – although James Comey, then the Director of the FBI, did give her a schoolmarmish lecture about seemly behavior or something along that line, and later made a feint in the direction of “reopening” the investigation upon the “discovery” of some additional emails that were also very quickly found to be inoffensive, but which many believe created a false impression of wrong-doing that cost Clinton the election.

I’m also willing to bet that you also remember all the Republicans who couldn’t constrain their concern about what they pretended to think was an earth-shaking matter, or, at least, what they wanted us to believe was a big bad no-no that deserved a serious hand-slapping. And, of course, Missouri’s GOP delegation were more than happy to join the feeding frenzy. A few examples:

Rep. Billly Long (R-7) got mightily exercised when the FBI investigation failed to find evidence of criminal wrongdoing:

The American people deserve better than a justice system that looks the other way rather than demanding honesty at federal agencies,” said Rep. Long.“Director Comey said point-blank that former Secretary Clinton recklessly stored and transmitted classified information, and it’s unthinkable that such brazen carelessness with our secret national security data could avoid justice.

GOP Senator Roy Bunt made some gleefully stern comments about Comey’s email Hail Mary :

From day one, it has been clear that Secretary Clinton did not take her national security clearance seriously,” […]. “The law establishes a standard that national security material cannot be handled carelessly. I have serious questions about the way the FBI has handled this case up to now. The immunity given, the potential evidence that was allowed to be destroyed, and political support for the spouse of a senior FBI official are all very concerning. The FBI needs to set a better standard as they reopen this case.”

Blunt’s over-the-top  I-told-you-so was echoed by Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2), who was fairly salivating at the prospect of seeing a hard-working public servant punished for … something:

Secretary Clinton’s reckless mishandling of classified information proves that she cannot be trusted with the support of Missouri families. I am hopeful that this most recent probe by the FBI will be conducted fairly, swiftly and more thoroughly than the previous investigation.

Well guess what? We now have an opportunity to see just  how seriously these self-righteous hacks really take a similar case where private email accounts have been used by the President’s capos to avoid public scrutiny. We’ll find out just who, if anyone in Missouri’s GOP delegation, has enough integrity to hold the apple(s) of Trump’s eye to the same standard with which they beat Hillary Clinton over the  head.

It seems that son-in-law-in-chief and presidential advisor, Jared Kushner, set up a private email account during the transition upon which he has since conducted official business in preference to his official White House account. We are assured that while he used the account to exchange “emails with senior White House officials, outside advisers and others about media coverage, event planning and other subjects,” he did nothing wrong. Of course, we’ll just have to take the White House’s word about that since the folks there aren’t inclined to hand the emails over. And we’re also supposed to trust their assurances that these emails will be preserved as required by law.

Gee, if Clinton had only known that all she had to do was to say that she’d done nothing wrong she could have saved herself a world of hurt. Or maybe not. Clinton is a Democrat. And a woman. And smarter and kinder than the sleaze bag Republicans put into the White House. All hanging offenses to  the members of the old, white, male cadre the GOP mostly represents.

Actually, use of private emails seems to be ubiquitous in Trump’s White House. Next time he tries to revive the “lock her up” business, remember that in addition to Kushner, White House officials Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon also used private email accounts to conduct their business.

Of course, we’ve known for some time that VP Mike Pence not only used private email to conduct state business in Indiana, but was actually hacked. Pence, interestingly enough,  said nary a word about his transgressions during the campaign when he and Cheeto-in-Chief went off on Clinton’s emails.

But no matter. Because nowadays, given the way the cookie crumbles, the ball bounces, the mop flops, and the tail wags, we’ll wait a long time before we hear a peep from our otherwise truculent Republicans about private emails being used to evade the attention of a public that said GOPers and the Ritchie Rich-pants in the white House are determined to well and truly fleece.

We need to remind them that Karma’s a bitch, the wheel of fortune turns, and the handwriting is on the wall.

Republicans go after the female vote

27 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by Michael Bersin in Uncategorized

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Ann Wagner, missouri, Reince Priebus, Republican Party, Vicky Hartzler, war on women

Today Ed Kilgore summarizes Sean Trende’s analyses suggesting that the GOP can forget minority outreach, deep-six the immigration bill with impunity, and win elections from now until 2040 with the white vote alone. However, if the GOP does decide that more rather than less racial polarization is the way to go, they’ll need every white vote that they can get. Sadly, there’s evidence that their policy positions on social issues are turning off younger white voters and white women, two groups with whom they’ll need to do a little better if they’re to realize success with the whites-only strategy.

Republican National Committee (RNC) Chair Reince Priebus seems to have decided to work on roping those wandering female voters back into the GOP corral. Evidence? Today marked the announcement of the formation of a Women on the Right UNITE project:

This Friday, six Republican committees will come together to launch “Women on the Right UNITE” – a joint project to promote the recruitment of and support for Republican women and women candidates – at a press conference in Washington. The committees include the Republican National Committee, Republican Governors Association, National Republican Senatorial Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee, Republican State Leadership Committee, and College Republican National Committee. Each committee will announce substantive plans to promote the role of women within the party and encourage more women to get involved and run for office.

According to the Atlantic Wire, Republicans claim to be concerned that only 8% of the GOP members in the House of Representatives are women – and, of course, they also want to figure out how to present “a more streamlined and packaged message about why Republican policies are beneficial to women.” Don’t laugh. After all, if the GOP and its corporate allies can persuade a significant number of Americans that man-made climate change is a hoax, they just might pull this off.

Among the nine elected women from the House of Representatives who will be talking up women in the GOP as part of the project will be Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2). Wonder why not Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-4)? Could it be that she and some of the remaining ten GOP women in the House might not have mastered the “nicer language” with which the GOP hopes female officials like Wagner will cloak the party’s anti-women policies? Could it be that she cuts a little too close to the fringewing home to be a safe participant in a PR effort to disguise the GOP war on women? I am assuming that the candidate for the “new Michele Bachmann” is not what Priebus wants out front.

It is worth noting, though, that women have actually been out front in the GOP for awhile and it hasn’t done the party much good when it comes creating distance from the war on women rhetoric:

In fact, Republican women have been involved in lots of controversies that helped portray the GOP as anti-woman. Reps. Diane Black and Marsha Roby have sponsored legislation to defund Planned Parenthood. Rep. Michele Bachmann portrayed Texas’s requirement that teens get an HPV vaccination – it prevents cervical cancer – as some kind of weird sex thing: “And to have innocent little 12-year-old girls be forced to have a government injection through an executive order is just flat out wrong.” That famous Virginia bill that would have required transvaginal ultrasounds before abortions last year? It was sponsored by a woman, Del. Kathy J. Byron. Byron defended the transvaginal ultrasound requirement, saying, “if we want to talk about invasiveness, there’s nothing more invasive than the procedure that she is about to have.”

While it will be interesting to see if the GOP can obfuscate and confuse women about what they really stand for, Republican women are still Republicans – and that includes Ann Wagner. When push comes to shove, there won’t be a hair’s breadth between the way Wagner and Hartzler perform.  

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