Can 'American Idol' really retire Hillary Clinton's campaign debt? And why pay off Mark Penn anyway?

She is not the only candidate with debt leftover from the Most Expensive Presidential Campaign ever.

Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani owes $2.4 million for campaign services spent on everything from from travel to telephones. Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd, already facing an expensive reelection campaign next year, has paid off $250,000 but still owes about $300,000 in campaign debts. Even former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, whose aw-shucks brand of campaigning didn't look very expensive, is, according to the latest Federal Election Commission reports, still short $82,000.

But nobody racked up more campaign debt than former first lady, former New York senator and now Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. In the heat of the primaries last May, facing the phenomenal Obama fundraising machine, she had piled up more than $22.5 million in debt, more than half owed to herself. In January, President-elect Barack Obama asked supporters to help retire the $10 million she owed others.

Last quarter she paid her pollster, Mark Penn, $3 million, but she still owes him $2.3 million. And some are questioning why she should pay the architect of her failed strategy anything at all.

Penn is the same pollster she forced out during the campaign because of his work for pro-trade clients, the very same genius behind her candidate-as-incumbent strategy blamed by some many Clintonites for her fall in a year when the last thing voters wanted was the incumbent.

Clinton, says Time magazine's Karen Tumulty, feels an obligation to retire every single penny of her campaign debt, at least the part owed to others.

So Clinton loyalist James Carville recently sent out an e-mail to the faithful, urging once last push to take this load off Hillary's back. The gambit: "Enter today to win one of three truly once in a lifetime opportunities and you will also be doing something great to help finish off Hillary's debt."

Call it the raffle-ticket approach to politics. 

For $5, win a day with former President Bill Clinton in New York, "a truly once-in-a-lifetime chance: You and a guest will spend a day with President Clinton and a weekend of fun-filled adventure in New York."

For $5, win a weekend in Washington D.C., including lunch with strategists Carville and Paul Begala, the go-to guys of the Clinton political operation.

Or, for $5, win tickets for you and a guest to watch the finale of Fox TV's "American Idol" in Los Angeles.

Making Hillary happy -- priceless.

Not all Clinton supporters are buying in.

"Not a dime for Mark Penn,"  says Jonathan Tasini on Huffington Post. His case: Penn, who has since teamed up with Bush advocate Karen Hughes in a bipartisan consulting business, is a tool of corporate interests who doesn't care about any of the issues that motivated Hillary.

Whether you like Penn or not, at $5 a pop, it will take 460,000 Clinton fans to pay off the pesky pollster.

Your vote?

 -- Johanna Neuman

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Photo Credit: Friends of Hillary

Comments

[Pom Pom Girl]

Vast Left Wing Conspiracy
Former First Lady and Senator Hillary Clinton once stated that there was a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy that was against her and her Husband. I wonder if she finally realizes, after being defeated in a race for the Nomination by the Party of the Noble Left that it was the Vast Left Wing conspiracy that finally did her in.
In the end, she has shown the rabid, fanatic tenacity of Al Gore (after losing to George Bush) in not going quietly stage left for the good of the Party and the country.
Her disappointment may be based on her perception that the left was more enamored with doing the politically correct thing of putting an ethnic minority in front of party symbol than a woman and that in doing so they have ended her Presidential hopes for all time. All she has left now is the hope that Obama will lose so she can run in 4 years and good riddance to that attitude and her meanness as well as her audacious sense of entitlement.
WHY IN GOOD CONSCIENCE WOULD I HELP THIS WOMAN OUT NOW?

[Pom Pom Girl]

Obama Taxes = Depression

Under Obama's plan he will raise taxes by over 800 billion dollars, once we swallow the stimulus bait, in an economy that may be on the verge of going into a recession while the Stock market seems to teeter on the brink. Does he not know enough about history that he does not remember Herbert Hoover?
In 1929 an Herbert Hoover raised taxes in the midst of an economic and Wall Street crisis. Economists will tell you that that piece of genius made a bad recession roll over into the Great Depression. Here we are a mere 80 years later and Obama has forgotten this devastating lesson from history.

At the same time he will spend far more than that 800 billion per year in his first four years as president, destroying the value of the U.S. dollar as he racks up 5 trillion in deficits. Perhaps we too will soon be using wheelbarrows full of money to pay for a loaf of bread.

Historical precedent is why the EU President calls Obamas tax and spend plans "the path to hell" and why even France and Germany are actively calling for Obama to reverse course.

[JB]

"Vast Left Wing Conspiracy
Former First Lady and Senator Hillary Clinton once stated that there was a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy that was against her and her Husband. I wonder if she finally realizes, after being defeated in a race for the Nomination by the Party of the Noble Left that it was the Vast Left Wing conspiracy that finally did her in. "

Both the Left Wing and the Right Wing Conspired against the Center.

The Right Wing furthered their agenda when they used the Blue Dress as a National Theatre to disgrace President Clinton. Their Watch Towers and Witch Hunting never cease since they first began the Religious Persecutions in our nation.

While they were Burning Bill and Hillary, they knew damnwell that President Clinton was monitoring the terrorist activities of Osama bin Laden. Once the Right Wing took office, they discontinued the CIA unmanned planes monitor ObL. Please read or reread the 911 Commission Report.

The Left Wing, on their dread and fear of the government agenda, have dreamt of a coupe. They used all of the fear tactics against American Citizens to cause Young Americans to be brainwashed into ideals that exist only in the mind and mostly not reality. They absed the fear of September 11, 2001 to create more paranoia than Bush himself could have caused with his Religious idiot fanatic droids.

Between the battle of Wits, the two Wings destroyed any sanity, security and safety we had. Now, the youth do not know how to think or feel and are indifferent to right vs. wrong.

Idiots outnumber thinkers and doers from both sides.