Strassel: Terry McAuliffe's Solyndra

WSJ story here ^

[Gopher Broke]

Turn over any green-energy rock, and wiggling underneath will be the usual creepy mix of political favoritism and taxpayer-funded handouts. Add to this the Clintons, Mississippi and a murky visa program, and you've got a particularly ripe political embarrassment for Terry McAuliffe.

Everyone remember The Macker? Best Friend of Bill. Chairman of Hillary's 2008 presidential campaign. Famed money-tree shaker. Former Democratic Party chief. Failed 2009 contender for the Virginia governorship but now back as the party's nominee for that position in this fall's election. Oh—and in Mr. McAuliffe's words—"a Virginia businessman" intent on "creating jobs."

Or at least that was the image Mr. McAuliffe sought to portray in 2009, when he became chairman of a car company called GreenTech Automotive, with plans to produce golf-cart sized electric vehicles. The former DNC chief is no stranger to moneymaking, having once used a friendly union pension fund to spin a $100 investment in a Florida land deal into $2.45 million. GreenTech, however, was designed to shed the moneyman image and to reposition Mr. McAuliffe as a (clean) job creator the way Mark Warner and Bob McDonnell used their pro-business credentials to win office in Virginia.

[magellan]

Terry McAuliffe is little more than a money launderer for the Democrat party. Federal City Bank was a thinly veiled money laundering operation for political candidates, and GreenTech Automotive appears to launder the money raised by the sale of EB-5 visas into McAuliffe’s gubernatorial campaign.

[surrey]

Is there anyone from Virginia (where i used to live) that can assure me that this creep has no shot? I’ve always found him to be the definition of smarmy.