Free Republic

A Republican in Congress raised the name of the CIA officer accused of being the Ukraine whistleblower during a congressional hearing about Puerto Rico last month. Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas asked Natalie Jaresko, Ukraine’s former finance minister, who is now executive director of the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico, whether she had any involvement with National Security Council officials in her previous post. He cited an April 2016 meeting at a Le Pain Quotidien restaurant close to the White House between Eric Ciaramella, another White House official, and Ukrainian parliamentarian Olga Bielkova. A Foreign Agents Registration...

A friend sent me an interesting Youtube video a couple of days ago, and I’ve been spending some time watching it and thinking about it. It’s a video from PBS consisting of an interview by Judy Woodruff of Doug Schoen and Elliot Ackerman, two of the principals of this group. As I listened to them, this all sounded very enticing on its surface, but the longer they spoke, the more I began to wonder about who is behind all of this. It seems like an effort to circumvent the ordinary electoral process, and when I think of that notion, the...

Americans Elect, after qualifying for ballot in 29 states, won't nominate a third-party presidential candidateAmericans Elect qualified for the presidential ballot in Oregon and 28 other states, but the group on Thursday said it is abandoning its effort to field a third-party presidential candidate this year. The well-funded group developed an elaborate online process aimed at attracting millions of voters who would nominate a candidate for president.  But the group said that no candidate managed to get enough voter support to participate in an online convention in June. "We will not hold a June convention," Ileana Wachtel, the group's press...

Americans Elect is a new group desperately trying to gain attention to run a presidential candidate who is, we are told, a  "bipartisan choice." Color me skeptical.  After reading Michael Warren's piece in The Weekly Standard, I was already sensing that the group -- with its disparate choices for president -- wasn't about any real policy ideas; "bipartisanship," after all, is about process (how one arrives at a decision) rather than about substance.  It sounds good, but doesn't mean anything on its own -- whether one favors bipartisan consensus depends on one's views on any given subject (i.e., pro-choicers and pro-lifers...

The real action that may well decide our next president is quietly going on elsewhere, in the state offices that qualify candidates and parties for the November 2012 presidential ballot. You may not have heard much about a shadowy group called "Americans Elect" (it does not disclose its contributors because of alleged concerns that they might suffer loss of business or social contacts, and because it fancifully but only occasionally declares itself to be a 501[c] [4] tax-exempt organization [though it has qualified as a political party for ballot position in multiple states including Ohio, California, Nevada, and Arizona, which...

(...) At a time of widespread dissatisfaction with Congress and the White House, the folks at Americans Elect see an opening for a popularly nominated presidential candidate. As Kahlil Byrd, the organization’s chief executive officer, recently told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, “The issues and the ideas that will take the country to a better place are pretty obvious to the American people. They don’t seem to be obvious in the governing that we have in Washington.” (...) Here’s how the nominating process works: Any registered voter can sign up on the Americans Elect website to become an official...

PPP's first national poll of 2012 finds Barack Obama with his best standing against Mitt Romney since last May, right after the killing of Osama bin Laden. Obama leads Romney 49-44. It's not as if Obama's suddenly become popular. He remains under water with 47% of voters approving of him to 50% who disapprove. Romney's even less popular, with only 35% rating him favorably while 53% have a negative opinion of him. Over the last month Romney's seen his negatives with independents rise from 46% to 54%, suggesting that the things he has to say and do to win the...

AE has reportedly raised more than $22 million so far and has already been certified to be placed on the ballot in 12 states now, including California. To getting on state ballots, AE evidenced mass organizing skills. The group says it collected over 2 million signatures nationwide in its effort to get on state ballots. KleinOnline found that two of AE’s board members, Kellen Arno and Michael Arno, were paid by the group for helping to run the massive signature gathering drive via their firm, Arno Political Consultants. Michael Arno is senior adviser to the Podesta Group lobbying and public...

Anyone with the remotest interest in replacing Barack Obama as America's president in 2012 should take his eyes off Iowa and the boring ups and downs of the race for the Republican nomination.The real action that may well decide our next president is quietly going on elsewhere, in the state offices that qualify candidates and parties for the November 2012 presidential ballot.  You may not have heard much about a shadowy group called "Americans Elect" (it does not disclose its contributors because of alleged concerns that they might suffer loss of business or social contacts, and because it fancifully but...

Just to be clear, this is less about following the money and more about following the ideology. As another freeper posted here, Americans Elect has seemingly been corrupted from within by big wigs and power brokers. Enter John Huntsman, who is being courted by Christine Todd Whitman to run on an Americans Elect ticket. I'm getting red flags about this. Below is some of what's in the original posting about the Soros - Americans Elect connection:

Purpose What if you had the power to choose a president? Americans Elect is creating the first nonpartisan presidential nomination in U.S. history. You decide the issues. You choose the candidates. You nominate the president. And the winner will be on the 2012 ballot in every state. YOUR VOICE, YOUR CHOICE, YOUR PRESIDENT