Hillary’s Karl Rove
This is rather funny:
Penn-Blackwater link puts HRC on defense
Hillary Clinton found herself defending her chief strategist Friday after The Associated Press reported that the public relations company Mark Penn runs had helped prepare the chief of the controversial military contractor Blackwater USA for his congressional testimony.
“Mark Penn did no work on the Blackwater account,” Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said Friday afternoon.
Burson-Marsteller, of which Penn is Worldwide President and CEO, “has cut its ties to Blackwater and that was the right thing to do. Mark is and remains a valuable member of our team,” Wolfson said.
Penn’s unusual dual role as corporate executive and presidential strategist has been a running source of distraction for Clinton’s typically single-minded campaign. Though her supporters believe that voters will ultimately be unlikely to make their choice based on the actions of a consultant who is little known outside political circles, Penn has drawn a steady stream of criticism from other campaigns and from key Democratic groups.
Labor leaders objected to his firm’s work against union organizing, and Burson-Marsteller’s work for clients that include the tobacco industry and a leading, troubled subprime mortgage lender, Countrywide Financial, have also drawn fire.
“Bush has been a perfect example of cronyism, because Blackwater has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republicans and to President Bush. I also saw this morning that Sen. Clinton’s primary adviser, Mark Penn, who is like her Karl Rove — his firm is representing Blackwater,” former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards said in Iowa Friday.
“I think it is important for Iowa caucus-goers to understand the choices they have in this election. And it is the reason I continue to say we don’t want to replace a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats.”
Sure, it is campaign politics and one campaign hitting another through the media. But it will raise a few questions in people's minds. The inside baseball stuff of politics is sometimes lost on the general public. This one might not be. There are a lot of people - on the left and right - who really do not like Hillary. This one might get some real legs.
By Mwalimu Daudi, Sunday, 7 October , 2007 @ 6:16 am
This one will get legs only if it does not threaten Democrat Party’s prospects in 2008. If it does, the MSM will quietly bury the Hillary-Penn-Blackwater link.