Obama Heads for John Edwards-type Hush Money Scandal?

Obama Heads for John Edwards-type Hush Money Scandal?
By John Ransom
5/14/2012

Staggering under an avalanche of bad news regarding the economy, Obama’s presidential campaign took another hit over the weekend as the New York Post detailed divisions amongst Democrats and radicals, including charges that Obama tried to buy the silence of his controversial Chicago pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Author Edward Klein in his new book The Amateur writes that Obama offered his long-time radical preacher and pastor $150,000 in hush money for staying out of the spotlight during Obama’s 2008 run for president.

I might add that I have a feeling that radical association with Obama was a booming cottage industry in 2007 and 2008 for many known associates of Obama’s who drew down 150 large to stay silent.

The web site The Blaze details the email offer of money as Wright described it in Klein’s book:

“Who sent the e-mail?” I asked Wright.

“It was from one of Barack’s closest friends.”

“He offered you money?”

“Not directly,” Wright said. “He sent the offer to one of the members of the church, who sent it to me.”

“How much money did he offer you?”

“One hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” Wright said.

It’s just another turn in Obama’s “fairytale” presidency that has the country now thinking “long national nightmare.”

Obama’s presidency has struggled so badly that, according to Klein, former president Bill Clinton urged his wife Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to challenge Obama in 2012.

Klein, reports the Blaze “has been making waves with explosive claims that former President Bill Clinton called Obama an ‘amateur’ and encouraged Hillary Clinton to quit her secretary of state post and run against him in 2012.”

And indeed there have been rumbling from Washington that Clinton has been urged by others to take on Obama.

Wrote professor Drew Westen of Emory University last summer: “Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he occasionally, as a state senator in Illinois, voted ‘present’ on difficult issues,”

The data coming out on the economy and Obama’s falling popularity amongst independent-minded voters makes the charges by Klein regarding the Clintons not just likely but probable.

And if Hillary isn’t challenging Obama, it’s only because 1) She recognizes that no matter what Democrats do this cycle, they’ll be weighed down by Obama’s increasing radicalism; and 2) She’s trying to preserve unity in the party for a run in 2016.

But the bigger story is the off-the-books money for our favorite radical The Right Reverend Wright.

If Wright is telling the truth, he surely is not the only radical associate of Obama’s that was offered a money-for-silence deal.

All of a sudden Bill Ayers reticence takes on less the character of a fellow traveler defending his buddy and more the air of a commercial transaction.

Two hundred Radicals times $150,000 comes out to $30 million- small change for Obama’s billion-dollar fund-raising machine.

The question then becomes: Where did this money come from and how was it accounted for by Obama?

But that the small question.

The even bigger question becomes: Is the footise that Obama played with Reverend Wright’s radial racial hatred-which he then sought to cover up- much different than the footsie that John Edwards tried to cover up with his knocked up mistress?

And then that question leads to asking who else Obama offered hush money to.

From an accounting and legal perspective, I would argue that even if the money was raised legitimately and accounted for in campaign filings under “hush money,” which of course it was not, Obama has a pretty big legal problem.

But his public relations problem might be worse.

The country seems to be suffering a bad case of Obama-burn.

I thought that the public was sick of the Clintons and Bush.

It’s nothing compared to where the country is verging on Obama.

Here’s hoping our long national nightmare will be over in November.
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To read another article by John Ransom, click here.