Attorney General Eric Holder appears to be bound and gagged and laying before the Obama bus. Now the Democrats are going after him, calling on him to resign. White House associates think he’s an inept AG. The rest of us are calling for his arrest and swift justice.
According to the New York Times:
Over the course of four and a half years, no other member of President Obama’s cabinet has been at the center of so many polarizing episodes or the target of so much criticism. While the White House publicly backed Mr. Holder as he tried to smooth over the latest uproar amid new speculation about his future, some in the West Wing privately tell associates they wish he would step down, viewing him as politically maladroit. But the latest attacks may stiffen the administration’s resistance in the near term to a change for fear of emboldening critics … But that does not mitigate the frustration of some presidential aides. “The White House is apoplectic about him, and has been for a long time,” said a Democratic former government official who did not want to be identified while talking about friends. Some advisers to Mr. Obama believe that Mr. Holder does not manage or foresee problems, the former official said. “How hard would it be to anticipate that The A.P. would be unhappy?” the former official said. “And then they haven’t defended their position.”
The above article was cited by Both Tom Brokaw and David Gregory on NBC’s Meet the Press yesterday. Brokaw took on the political point of view saying “One of the ways that you can measure the impact of all of this and the fairness of it, is think if this had happened in the Bush administration with John Ashcroft as the attorney general. You know full well that the Democrats and the left would be going very hard after them.”
It’s too bad they won’t just look at this from the perspective of law. If they did they would be doing more than merely “analyzing” the scandals from a purely political point of view.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/gWpRsV8rXPk[/youtube]
Audrey Hudson writes:
Trending:
President Barack Obama’s advisers are frustrated with Holder’s inability to foresee problems arising from his approval of a subpoena naming a Fox News reporter as a coconspirator in an espionage investigation. Now Congress is looking at whether Holder lied under oath when he testified last month that he knew nothing about the incident.
Additionally, Holder has become a lightening (sic) rod for criticism for pulling the phone records of 100 Associated Press reporters in another polarizing investigation.
“How hard would it be to anticipate that the AP would be unhappy?” the former official said. “And then they haven’t defended their position.”
On CBS’ Face the Nation, The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward said the American people want straight talk about the ongoing and expanding scandals from Holder and Obama. “It’s all very troubling, and you lump all these things, IRS and Benghazi together, and what you’ve got is a feeling that no one’s coming clean, we aren’t getting straight talk,” Woodward said.
“This goes to President Obama, he’s got to find a way to unravel this. We live in an age of distrust, I think it’s more severe now, and he has to find some way to clean this up and say this is what happened,” Woodward added.
So why hasn’t Barack Obama tossed Eric Holder under the bus like he did to so many in his administration? Guy Benson muses that there are three theories:
- Holder knows too much. Because the Attorney General knows “where the bodies are buried” within this administration, Obama can’t afford to alienate him by offering him up as a sacrificial lamb.
- Obama and Holder’s relationship is very strong, so the former is treating the latter with extraordinary patience. Obama places a high premium on political loyalty; in addition to being a close friend and confidante, Holder has been a reliable ally in wielding his power to advance the president’s agenda over the years.
- Cutting Holder loose in the thick of scandalmania (which appears to be expanding by the day) may accomplish little more than emboldening Obama’s critics and fueling the media feeding frenzy.
Benson writes, “I personally come down in the middle of options two and three. Option one would be more compelling if I didn’t believe Holder is extremely unlikely to “flip” on Obama under almost any circumstance; he likely sees his legacy as inextricably linked to his boss’s, and would therefore do nothing to intentionally harm the Obama presidency.”
I tend to agree with that assessment.
Tim Brown is the Editor of Freedom Outpost and a regular contributor to The D.C. Clothesline.
