More Romney Rats

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

I recently got hold of a list of co-chairs for a Mitt Romney fundraiser in DC back on February 27, that’s chock-full of top-level lobbyists. Several are with Dutko, the firm of Massachusetts’s RNC committeeman and Romney supporter Ron Kaufman. Several are current or former lobbyists for big Pharma or big tobacco. Several have direct connections to indicted former speaker Tom DeLay and/or convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

There are also at least two connections to the Bill Clinton impeachment: Alice M. Starr, wife of special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, and Drew Maloney, who helped manage the impeachment hearings for Congress, and helped conduct the Monica Lewinsky interview.

However, what really fascinated me was the presence of quite a few of the top lobbyists for the energy industry -- including Maloney, who has lobbied for the American Petroleum Institute, Texas Energy Center, and Gas Technology Institute. Other include Kent Burton lobbyist for many of the biggest gas and petroleum companies; Jack Gerard, former president of the National Mining Association, a major coal-industry lobby; Rick Shelby, lobbyist for the American Gas Association; and Vin Weber, lobbyist for Edison Electric and General Electric.

The reason I was so struck is because of another name on that same list of Romney fundraisers: Andrew Lundquist. Lundquist was executive director of the National Energy Policy Development Group -- you know, the advisors who developed the administration’s national energy policy, and whose members Cheney has steadfastly refused to make public. Lundquist went on to be Cheney’s energy policy director, implementing the group’s recommendations. Then he left the administration to become -- you’ll never guess -- a top lobbyist for energy companies, including British Petroleum and Mettiki Coal.

Was the Romney fundraiser a partial reunion of Lundquist’s secret Cheney energy policy group? And have they found a new friend in Mitt Romney?

More:
http://www.thephoenix.com/TalkingPolitics/PermaLink.aspx?guid=69785672-a0f1-4a9f-b240-a12a32661896

with some of Darth Cheney's old buds? Hmmmmm. That can't bode anyone any good (except maybe Dick, Mitt, and the members of Cheney's energy policy group).

it's almost as if somebody set him up for a fall.

because the PRIZE - trillions of dollars in oil in Iraq is just too big for them to walk away from.....

have interesting three ways and very different dynamics. Romney is an unnoticed frontrunner as is possibly Edwards(but that depends more on voters not backers). All that has to happen for Romney despite all his gaffes is for the tweo no-gos in front of him to implode on schedule without giving time to "second tier" dark horses. Simple fiat and media benediction, blank check etc.

What i find curious about Romeny';s campaign. Horrendous gaffes such as insulting Cubans in Florida. The hunter pose. Those are precisrely crafted areas where Jec=b and minimally intelligent handlers should have prepped him so that- at the very very least- the basis of what he said would only bbe bad if he miffed it. It sounds like they have deliberately let or fed him dumb statements. Why? To control him further down the road and make him more Bush dynasty dependent? That could be because letting go to ANYONE outside of the tight circle is really scary. Their desperate floating of Condi and Jeb indicates that. But if he is irredeemably bad it must scare the funders even with all the fixes in the world.

For now the real Romney campaign is laying in the Bushes, not even attempting, perhaps not even daring to peak or go for real campaign power. After all, the primary, unknown to sour their electorate core, is a done deal with no champions on the horizon. They will be given Romeny and then the real pumping up of the balloon will begin. Until then the GOP should be alarmed that the Bushes don'y evn care how bad they are making their main guy look. Probably using this time to prune his staff of Romney loyalists and independents who might rival the Cheney faction the way the zealous Reagan camp did. In such an inner power dynamic the poor sap on top has become regressively less substantial(Reagan to Bushes to Mitt).

As for winning the election, that is another problem altogether and one that barely matters which GOP candidate is running.