Obama Loses Gregg At Commerce
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Barack, Republicans
Definitely a blow to Obama right in the middle of the last days of this stimulus package. I don’t know if this will change any Republican votes, but for Gregg to come out so publicly against the stimulus could be incredibly damaging.
Well, back to the drawing board on a Commerce Secretary for President Obama. (He’s speaking in Peoria at this moment and may not even know yet; his press folks certainly didn’t.)But New Hampshire Republican Sen. Judd Gregg has just withdrawn his name from the already-announced nomination be be the new secretary of Commerce. He cites irreconciliable differences with his potential boss over the economic stimulus package and with the Census, which has now been moved over to White House control. [...]
Here’s how Gregg himself put it moments ago:
“It has become apparent during this process that this will not work for me as I have found that on issues such as the stimulus package and the Census there are irresolvable conflicts for me. Prior to accepting this post, we had discussed these and other potential differences, but unfortunately we did not adequately focus on these concerns.”
That last sentence definitely sounds loaded. Did Obama promise Gregg things and then not follow through? We’ll probably hear more details soon.
One thing’s for sure…Gregg knew what the size and scope of the initial stimulus plan was before he accepted the nomination so it probably wasn’t that. And for him to cite that as a reason, well, come on Judd.
No, it had to be the census, but did you know that census actually wasn’t pulled from Commerce? That’s right, the story above is WRONG.
So what’s the deal?
Given all of this, can Obama risk appointing another Republican to his cabinet at this point if the philosophical gaps are too much and the situation could end up in the exact same place?
Certainly disappointing.
More as it develops…
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 12th, 2009 and is filed under Barack, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
