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Center for American Progress completes takeover of White House

Center for American Progress completes takeover of White House

The news of the day is that John Podesta, the founder and head of The Center for American Progress,  is becoming a White House advisor.  The NY Times reports, Ex-Clinton Aide Expected to Join Obama:

President Obama, after a rocky year that leaves him at the lowest ebb of his presidency, is bringing into his White House circle the longtime Democratic strategist John D. Podesta, a former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton.

 Mr. Podesta, who has agreed to serve as counselor for a year, led Mr. Obama’s presidential transition in 2008 and has been an outside adviser since then. He also has occasionally criticized the administration, if gently, from his perch as the founder and former president of the Center for American Progress, a center-left public policy research group that has provided personnel and policy ideas to the administration.

CAP  runs the Tea Party-bashing, race-card playing, Koch Brothers-obsessed Think Progress website, most infamous for its misleading video charging the Tea Party with racism, and a co-sponsor of the now-defunct Tea Party Tracker website.

Podesta has been extremely effective, with The Washington Free Beacon documenting How the Center for American Progress conquered America

While many are expressing surprise that someone so closely connected to the Clintons would be brought on board, that surprise ignores the fact, as we reported in December 2011, that White House and Think Progress merger complete:

The Center for American Progress (CAP), the George Soros funded Democratic messaging machine, runs the aggressive Think Progress website.

Think Progress is obsessed with attacking the Tea Party movement as racist, the Koch Brothers as evil manipulators, and Clarence Thomas as corrupt. Think Progress blogger Matthew Yglesias helped ignite the false story that Sarah Palin’s electoral map was connected to the Gabrielle Giffords shooting.

Think Progress is the public face of CAP, dominating news cycles with its relentless attacks on anyone who opposes Obama.

CAP, which was run for years by former Clinton adviser John Podesta, now is run by a former Obama campaign staffer, Neera Tanden.

Now the White House is bringing a senior CAP strategist Jennifer Palmieri into the White House to help prepare for the 2012 campaign…..

A senior Obama campaign official now runs CAP and Think Progress. A senior CAP strategist now helps run the 2012 campaign from inside the White House. The full embrace of CAP and Think Progress by the White House is just another sign that 2012 will be the nastiest campaign ever, with the truth the first victim.

The merger of the White House and Think Progress is just about complete. Think Progress is in control, or is the Obama campaign, or is there no difference anymore?

The symbiotic relationship between CAP and The White House apparently wasn’t enough. The question is, who now is calling the shots?

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Comments

Some Clinton influence would be welcome if it presaged a pivot to pragmatism from the Obama administration, but unfortunately it sounds like their goal isn’t to help America, but to beat Republicans.

2nd Ammendment Mother | December 10, 2013 at 2:44 pm

Yippee…. even more Soros influences

All they did is shorten the commute.

    2nd Ammendment Mother in reply to Ragspierre. | December 11, 2013 at 3:14 pm

    And pad Podesta’s payroll checks? I haven’t heard anyone say that he wasn’t still working for Think Progress too. In fact, I can’t even imagine that he’d willingly give up that kind of power for a White House consulting gig – unless he got to keep both jobs.

I hope some enterprising researcher will look at the excessive coverage by the supposedly unbiased Memeorandum of every fartlette emanating from Think Progress.

The U.S. already has plenty of natural gas and right in D.C., too. We the people don’t need Podesta.

I hope Obama is paying for Podesta out of his own pocket. The Obama learning curve is wiping us out.

Obama doesn’t learn from his mistakes because no one close to him has the guts to tell him that he is making big mistakes. Even if someone did tell Obama, Obama would fall backwards incredulously, ego momentarily winded.

Podesta isn’t there to save Obama. He’s there to save the Democrat Party from Obama.

    BannedbytheGuardian in reply to Henry Hawkins. | December 10, 2013 at 4:27 pm

    That was my take also . The WH us burning through every default attack / defence democrats possess faster than new ones can be thought up.

    But for the opposing forces this is good news. Pedestal ( I will leave that in – thanks auto ) is old garbage recycled .& advancing in years . Pedestrian at best.

Bitterlyclinging | December 10, 2013 at 4:27 pm

Looks like Soros is trying to take a little firmer control by shortening the leash on the Obama Administration now that it looks like the wheels might come off. Could it be that Comrade Barack was Georgie’s paid boy all along and when Georgie says “Bend over” Comrade Barack asks “How far?”
Truth be stranger than fiction sometimes. “Daddy Warbucks” picks one of the original Chicago Bath House Boys out of the street gutter and has him crowned president.
Make a splendid Broadway Play, someday, it would.

Insufficiently Sensitive | December 10, 2013 at 4:41 pm

This ‘news’ is clearly about the year 2012. Is there some particular reason we’re supposed to react with horror at the end of 2013?

Anyone know what CAP’s tax status is?

Not A Member of Any Organized Political | December 10, 2013 at 6:52 pm

With such in the “White House” no wonder young voters are ending support of Obama and his Obama-crat Dems!

“Young Voters Would Recall Obama, Congress, If Possible;
Only 18% Think Obamacare will Make Things Better”

Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2013-12-08T19:26:00-08:00&max-results=3&start=3&by-date=false#3wATwLriAEkkReVu.99

    The radical left are long ballers who understand that immediate losses from their youth base will fade in short order (a few years) as new issues, politicians, administrations emerge. Today’s youth will be paying for Obamacare and much else for the rest of their lives, but if allowed to stand it will all pass from ‘terrible’ to ‘status quo’ in short order in the minds and hearts of the currently young. The left knows this and counts on it, and also knows that true anger and rage may only be kept up for so long. They are currently testing out where the lines are.

    Long ball – planning by decades, rather than the GOP manner of planning by the latest polls and media directives, never seeing past the next midterm/national election cycles (2 yrs/4 yrs).

Podesta was the man charged with saving Clinton’s Presidency in the face of the Lewinsky and Paula Jones scandals.

His primary tactic was to go on offense, attacking everyone who so much as questioned Clinton’s honesty or behavior, especially the man Clinton himself had hailed as a respected jurist when appointing him Independent Counsel over the Whitewater scandals, Kenneth Starr.

You think it’s nasty now? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.