Tom In VA wrote:88,
To play Devil's Advocate here, the timeline doesn't need to add up for Spitzer to be "targetted" for some political assassination. The article outlines that conflict existed for awhile, as far back as 2003. It's plausible.
That being said, where is the evidence that Bush, or anyone else for that matter instigated the investigation ?
We don't often agree on political topics, but we agree here. Spitzer's favored m.o. was as a muckraker from the inside. That had been the case long before the article Nicky cited was published. Suffice it to say that he wasn't on the Bushies' Christmas card list, and not just because he doesn't celebrate that holiday.
But as you mentioned, the more disturbing issue with Nicky's premise is that there isn't a scintilla of evidence tying this investigation to any of the Bushies. And I'm no fan or apologist of the Bushies, not by a longshot.
PSUFAN wrote:So Elliot dipped his candlestick into some goyim wax. I never understood why that was something that could unseat him.
I'm with you on that. When this story first broke, the local media presented it as more or less a
fait accompli that Spitzer would resign, completely ignoring the fact that many other political figures ('sup, David Vitter) had survived similar, and in some cases more embarrassing, scandals.
Perhaps Spitzer, or someone close to him, concluded that he would have no credibility if he was something less than squeaky clean in his private life. But then again, his targets were greed, fraud and corruption in the public and corporate sectors. He was never someone to lecture the American people about their perceived lack of family values, unlike Vitter.
Perhaps the answer lies in my own training as a criminal defense attorney. By the time the story on Vitter broke, any criminal statute of limitations had long since expired, so criminal prosecution was an empty threat as far as he was concerned. Not so with Spitzer. Perhaps resignation was the bone he threw to his political opponents in order to escape criminal prosecution.