Michael Bennet

This weekend’s Inside Washington put on full display the liberal sensibilities of the Washington press corps as Newsweek veteran Evan Thomas yearned for a win in Colorado for incumbent Democratic Senator Michael Bennet, “a good guy,” wishing “sometimes justice does triumph,” and former Wall Street Journal reporter Jeanne Cummings, now with Politico, was upset Republican Meg Whitman might win the California gubernatorial race: “She’s  built a turn-out operation of her own and it worries me.”

Thomas soon hailed Lincoln Chafee, the ex-Republican who campaigned for Barack Obama in 2008 and is now an independent candidate for Governor in Rhode Island, as “a tiny little ray of hope” since he’s the kind of “liberal Republican” which “did the Republican Party a lot of good.” Despite the fact he abandoned the GOP, Thomas trumpeted him as “a voice for reason in the Republican Party.”

David Gregory on Sunday asked what he must have thought was a loaded question concerning alleged racism in the Tea Party.

Likely much to his surprise, both his Republican and Democrat guests on "Meet the Press" said they hadn't seen any evidence of that (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Democratic Senator Michael Bennet got his own live spot on Wednesday's Today show to make his pitch to Colorado voters, but his Republican opponent only got a brief soundbite, that came after a clip of him that put him in a negative, even sexist light. While Today co-anchor Ann Curry chatted live with Bennet in the first half hour, NBC's Kelly O'Donnell only gave Republican candidate Ken Buck a few seconds in her report on yesterday's primary races:

KELLY O'DONNELL: Winning on the Republican side - career prosecutor Ken Buck who had said this on the trail.

KEN BUCK: Why should you vote for me? Because I do not wear high heels.

O'DONNELL: Former Lieutenant Governor Jane Norton was the establishment choice, but the Tea Party picked Buck. Do you think of yourself as a Tea Party candidate?

BUCK: I think of myself as a grassroots candidate and the Tea Parties are certainly part of that grassroots effort.

O'Donnell never gave Buck the chance to explain to the country that his comment/joke came in response to Norton criticism of his candidacy, as he told CBS News' Bob Orr: "My opponent has said a number of times on the campaign trail that people should vote for her because she wears high heels, because she wears a skirt, because she's a woman...She ran a commercial that said Ken Buck should be man enough to do X, Y, and Z...I made a statement, it was a lighthearted statement that I'm man enough, I don't wear high heels and I have cowboy boots on."

Well hallelujah!

After 8 months of being in a silent lockdown mode on the subject of whether the White House offered the Democrat Senate candidate from Colorado, Andrew Romanoff (photo), a job if he would remove himself from the primary race, the Denver Post has finally gotten around to reporting on it again following their initial September story. By strange "coincidence" the Post's sudden willingness to once again broach this subject happened just hours after their bizarre silence on this topic was pointed out by various blogs on the web including the NewsBusters blog of your humble correspondent yesterday.

The first Denver Post mention in 8 months of this allegation comes from the blog of staff writer Michael Booth who sounds irritated with Republicans for even focusing on this situation:

Republicans trying hard to make Joe Sestak’s job-trading allegations stick are dragging Colorado Senate challenger Andrew Romanoff into the argument.

Much of their ammunition comes straight from a Denver Post article last September by Washington correspondent Michael Riley. The Post article cited top Democratic sources saying the Obama administration “suggested a place for Romanoff might be found” in the executive branch. The implication was that the job would be available if Romanoff dropped any challenge to appointed Sen. Michael Bennet for the Colorado Democratic primary. 

A Democrat candidate running against a Senate incumbent is offered a job by the White House as an incentive to drop out of the primary race. Sounds like the Joe Sestak scandal in which he alleged that someone in the White House offered him a job in order to drop out of the race against the incumbent senator from Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter. Right? Well, yes. However, this also perfectly describes another similar scandal in which it is alleged that the White House offered a job to Andrew Romanoff (photo) in order to drop out of the primary race for the senate from Colorado against incumbent Michael Bennet. And the amazing thing about this scandal is that the newspaper that broke it has since remained completely silent on any further reporting.

First the scandal details as reported by Michael Riley for the Denver Post in this September 27, 2009 article: 

WASHINGTON — Not long after news leaked last month that Andrew Romanoff was determined to make a Democratic primary run against Sen. Michael Bennet, Romanoff received an unexpected communication from one of the most powerful men in Washington.

Jim Messina, President Barack Obama's deputy chief of staff and a storied fixer in the White House political shop, suggested a place for Romanoff might be found in the administration and offered specific suggestions, according to several sources who described the communication to The Denver Post.

Romanoff turned down the overture, which included mention of a job at USAID, the foreign aid agency, sources said.

In the wake of Saturday's Senate vote to move forward with debate on controversial healthcare reform legislation, CNN's John King may have posed one of the best questions asked on any of Sunday's political talk shows:

To get Senator [Mary] Landrieu's vote, just to proceed, just to go across the starting line, language was inserted in the bill that gives her state up to $300 million. To get Senator [Ben] Nelson's vote, [Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid] agreed to drop a request that you take away the antitrust exemptions for insurance companies...[Is healthcare reform] important enough to buy votes?

This marvelous question was asked on Sunday's "State of the Union." In attendance were Democrat Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Michael Bennet of Colorado, and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire.

Better still, King pointed a finger at President Obama who promised during the campaign "to change the way Washington works" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, h/t Breitbart TV):