.jpg)
When it comes to dodging bullets, few have done it better than Claire McCaskill…
Long ago the Missouri senator’s political colleagues bestowed upon her the nickname "Blonde Ambition." And through the years McCaskill’s used her uncanny skills at charming members of the local media to navigate past any number of potentially career killing missteps.
Let’s look at McCaskill’s latest hot mess and review some of the ones she’s skittered past in the past.
"Senator tripped up by back tax," reads the front page headline in today’s Star. "Revelation is second political embarrassment this month regarding Claire McCaskill’s plane."
"Sen. Claire McCaskill said Monday that she owes nearly $300,000 for four years worth of back taxes on a private airplane that has become a source of political tubulance," the story begins. "In a conference call with reporters, the Missouri Democrat said that she would pay the bill immediately and has told her husband to ‘sell the damn plane…I will never set foot on the plane again.’ "
Facing a tough re-election challenge from Republicans next year, can McCaskill steer past the scandal?
She’s done it before.
In 1994 McCaskill’s husband at the time was busted for smoking pot on the Argosy riverboat casino.
McCaskill, Jackson County Prosecutor at the time, schmoozed her way past the drug bust embarrassment by feeding the Star a quippy quote about her husband, "It’s going to take about a month before I can resist the urge to kill him," she said.
Sound familiar?
Kinda like the quote she laid on the media yesterday, shifting the blame for the plane controversy to her current husband.
McCaskill took another hit in ’94 when news broke that her Osage Beach condominium was about to be sold for back taxes.
"My brother paid those," McCaskill backpedaled to the Star.
Excuses aside, the fact was Camden County had published a notice that it would auction off the condo McCaskill her husband owned for $2,337 in back taxes dating to 1991.
Again the Star let McCaskill off the hook, allowing her to offer up her younger brother as scapegoat.
Here’s how the Star fell short of the journalistic mark.
As noted by the Johnson County prosecutor at the time, tough questions went unasked. Like how the Hippie Era aged McCaskill could be married to and living with a pothead and be oblivious of the fact. And letting her blame shift not paying real estate taxes billed to her and her husband for three years to her younger brother.
Think about it.
The bottom line today: There’s a vast difference between explaining things away to a handful of user-friendly reporters at the local paper and dealing with the national news media.
Hearne…this is good….great writing
as hard as it is to say this..thisis what makes you great. Great article…nice facts…and pointing
out she’s cooked in politics.
But this problem is not jsut her’s…its all of ours…because these people believe laws are made for
other people…not them and while the 99% of america takes a beating….the politicians/lobbyists/
corporations/thieves go scott free on breaking the law.
The revolution is starting….watch out….people are catching on to the con game….and realizing
who’s betting robbed.
nice work.
I agree!
Can you imagine how the Star would be reporting this story if it happened to Kobach instead of Claire? It would be front page stuff.
Testing Is How We Get Them
She is a doper just as her toker husband is. She just hasn’t been caught. And was no way in hell going to bust her meal ticket for it.
Why I say if you want to be an elected or paid person who enforces the laws of the lands you are subject to be tested on a very regulated bases for alcohol and drugs. And there will be none of this I didn’t inhale crap or second hand smoke. You test dirty you get pink slip.
As well as did she not co-sponsor a bill where if you were caught not paying taxes you were pinked slipped as well?
In fairness to the Star, it was front page stuff, today. They just didn’t put it in perspective.
The Term “Skanky Elitist Bitch”
Is far too good for her.
Pot Smoking Husband
I think her pot smoking ex-husband died a few years back near a crack house. Her current husband is apparently wealthy, living off the fortunes of senior citizens, and reportedly not taking very good care of them. I think Claire will actually breeze by this one also, there hasn’t been one decent conservative/republican that is will to step up to the plate and take her down.
Pot Smoking Husband
Public opinion has always been that David Exposito turned to drugs sometime after waking up with her after the first year of marriage. Can you even imagine the horror?