Now that Scaife is dead, Tribune Review is pushing Webb, not Clinton
Last edited Sun Mar 15, 2015, 05:30 PM - Edit history (1)
When uber-conservative, multi-millionaire Richard Scaife was alive, (very old and a bit senile, but still alive) Hill & Bill sucked up to him so hard that Bill got contributions to his boutique, family owned "non-profit" which subsidizes the Clintons' 5 star life style and Hillary got Scaife's endorsement in the 2008 primary in the newspaper Scaife owned and published, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. One had to wonder what on earth quid pro quo Hillary offered to win over the extremely conservative Scaife. Now Scaife is gone (with a lovely eulogy by Bill at the memorial service) and also gone with the wind is any endorsement of HRC by the paper formerly owned by Scaife.
It was delightful to see in today's Trib-Review a very long, detailed and glowing article about Jim Webb. They like him - they really like him! And that's because he's pretty conservative for a Democrat. What I'm delighted about is that he and other Dems, including Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, are expressing interest in making our primary a horse race and not a coronation.
Former Senator Webb explores presidential bid, tests populist message
WASHINGTON — Jim Webb's parents taught him early what it means to be a leader. “Different families have different discussions at the dinner table,” he said. “Ours was how you lead people; how do you take care of people?” Those talks typically culminated in this question: “What kind of leader do you want — a leader who will make you do something, or make you want to do something?” he told the Tribune-Review in an interview on Capitol Hill. He knew then that his life's calling was “this alternating cycle of public service and independent entrepreneurship.”
Webb, 69, the former senator from Virginia, is pondering whether he can gain the support necessary to make a successful run in 2016 for the Democratic nomination for president.
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Then Webb became the first potential 2016 presidential candidate to form an exploratory committee, in November. His populist style differs from other Democrats who might seek the party's nomination by putting forth sharp anti-Wall Street, anti-Koch brothers rhetoric. “This is not ‘anti-Wall Street' for me,” he said. “We have to grow our economy for people to have successful lives, but at the same time, we have to be fair.”
He is clear that he would never vote to increase taxes on “ordinary earned salary income, no matter what the level is, that is fairly earned.” But he questions income such as capital gains, “where you can be making millions of dollars off of stock sales and pay a lower tax rate than the firefighters putting their lives on the line.”
Read more: http://triblive.com/politics/politicalheadlines/7948450-74/webb-former-populist#ixzz3UUDMTifL
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How conservative was Scaife? His was the money behind that "vast right-wing conspiracy" HRC was once so upset about. Here are just a few examples from a lengthy Washington Post article:
Mr. Scaife donated millions to such tea party-friendly groups as FreedomWorks, known for its anti-union campaigns and calls for reducing government regulation of business, privatizing Social Security and establishing English as the official language of the United States.
He was a major underwriter of the American Spectator magazine’s Arkansas Project to find evidence of financial and personal misdeeds by the Clintons in the 1990s. The effort included David Brock’s magazine story containing allegations from four Arkansas state troopers that they helped procure women for then-Gov. Bill Clinton.
Most notably, Mr. Scaife personally hired a freelance writer to try to establish that either President Clinton or then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was instrumental in the death of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent W. Foster Jr. in 1993. Foster, a former law-firm partner of the first lady, was found dead from a gunshot wound to the mouth in Fort Marcy Park in Fairfax County.
Three investigations, including one in 1997 by Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr, a luminary in the conservative firmament, ruled the death a suicide. Mr. Scaife was unpersuaded. In 1998, he told George magazine editor in chief John F. Kennedy Jr. that the Foster death was “the Rosetta stone to the Clinton administration,” referring to the ancient Egyptian stone used to decipher hieroglyphics, and that Bill Clinton “can order people done away with at his will. He’s got the entire federal government behind him.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/richard-mellon-scaife-billionaire-famous-for-attacks-against-bill-clinton-has-died/2014/07/04/9e2fcace-458c-11e3-bf0c-cebf37c6f484_story.html
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