February 13, 2009

Why Gregg?

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WHY GREGG?….I don’t know what really happened to cause Judd Gregg to withdraw his nomination as Commerce Secretary.  It’s absurd for him to say that he hadn’t really thought through the consequences of the stimulus package, which was by far the biggest story in Washington at the time he was nominated, and he claims the census kerfuffle was trivial.  So what was it?

Who knows?  But I’m sort of curious about the other side of this nomination too.  What was Obama thinking?  It’s one thing to nominate a moderate conservative like Ray LaHood, or pragmatists like Jim Jones and Robert Gates, but Gregg is a full-blown dyed-in-the-wool fiscal conservative.  He’s not a crank, but he’s not within light years of finding common ground with a liberal Democratic president either.

So why did Obama nominate him?  Does he just not care about the Commerce Department?  Or did he really think that somehow this could work out?  The more I think about it, the stranger it seems.

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