From the department of "You Can't Make This Shit Up."
Tim Pawlenty, who is so certain that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac single-handedly caused the 2008 financial crisis, hired one of their top lobbyists of the last decade to be one of his campaign co-chairs.
Pawlenty has suggested that blame for the financial crisis rests only with the “catastrophic scandal of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” the two government sponsored mortgage giants. But for all his bluster about Freddie Mac, which required a massive bailout in 2008, Pawlenty had no problem making Freddie’s top government enabler a leader in his presidential campaign.
When he announced his campaign, Pawlenty tapped William Strong, a vice chairman of Morgan Stanley, and Vin Weber, a veteran K Street lobbyist, as his campaign co-chairs. And Weber is not just any corporate lobbyist.
According to a review by ThinkProgress, Weber represented Freddie Mac for an entire decade, from 1998 to 2008. The partnership between Freddie Mac and Weber ended in 2008 when, as part of the government bailout deal, Freddie Mac was barred from hiring lobbyists. For some of the period Weber represented the company, his firm was paid as much as $360,000 a year to lobby for Freddie Mac. As reports from the AP and MinnPost.com from 2008 reveal, Weber helped create the “catastrophic scandal” his boss Pawlenty now laments.
Well that's brilliant.
If Tim Pawlenty believes that blame for the 2008 financial crisis rests solely with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, why would he hire someone who lobbied for Fannie and Freddie for the entire duration of the run-up to the financial crisis?
Isn't hiring a lobbyist as your campaign co-chair, a lobbyist who was let go from his former employer only after the government barred Fannie and Freddie from hiring lobbyists, a little counterproductive if you're trying to make a "blame the government" argument?
Are there any serious Republican candidates out there?