Chris Dodd Picks Up an Opponent

It's much too early for such polling to be accurate. So let's disregard the one point lead that Rob Simmons already has on Senator Chris "Sweetheart Mortgage" Dodd - plus we may jinx Mr. Simmon's chances - and focus instead on his positions.

From today's Westerly Sun.

If he were in the Senate now, he said he would have voted against the stimulus bill, calling it a throwback to the 1930s. A better plan would be to return to the 1960s or 1980s, he explained, when presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan helped stimulate the economy by cutting business taxes.

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His other suggestion for stabilizing the economy was a three-month tax holiday, which would cost much less than the stimulus bill and give taxpayers more money to shop and spread their money around.

He also disapproved of the bank bailouts, he said, as well as the legislators who gave money away without oversight and then complained afterward about how it was used.

Damn. Does he have a twin in Rhode Island?

By the way, the incumbent did finally "coming clean" on one of his scandals ... um, by playing a game of peek-a-boo with it. From the Wall Street Journal of February 3.

Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd has finally, sort of, kind of, ended 193 days of stonewalling about his sweetheart loans from former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo. At least he did if you were a fast reader and were one of the few reporters he invited to his Hartford office yesterday to review -- but not copy or take -- more than 100 pages of documents related to his 2003 mortgage financings through Countrywide's "Friends of Angelo" program.

These are the files that Mr. Dodd pledged to make public after the news broke last summer that the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee had received preferential treatment from Countrywide. At first, Mr. Dodd denied everything. Later, he conceded that he'd been given special treatment but thought it was "more of a courtesy."

Whew. Glad that's cleared up.