Clinton top aide Harold Ickes voted for FL/MI rules, now blurs them for Clinton

[Adelante]

Clinton camp: All the way to convention

-snip

On Florida and Michigan, the campaign again said voters in those states should not be “disenfranchised” and that the states were important to the Democratic Party's fortunes. Ickes also said Clinton didn't vote on the DNC rules.

But Ickes did. And he voted in August to strip Florida and Michigan of their delegates as a sitting member of the Rules and Bylaws Commission.

“There’s been no change,” Ickes said, adding that he was then acting as a member of the Rules and Bylaws Committee “not acting as an agent of Sen. Clinton. We had promulgated rules -- if Florida and Michigan violated those rules” they’d be stripped of their delegates. “We stripped them of all their delegates in order to prevent campaigns to campaign in those states.”

In fact, however, that was not why Florida and Michigan were stripped of their delegates. They were stripped of their delegates because they violated party rules by moving up their contest dates before Feb. 5. A pledge to not campaign in those states did not come about until one was put forward by the four early states allowed to go before Feb. 5 by the DNC -- Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. Clinton was the last to sign this pledge.

“Those were the rules, and we thought we had an obligation to enforce them,” Ickes acknowledged today on the call even while trying to convince members of the media that Florida’s and Michigan’s delegations should not only be seated at the convention, but should also have full voting rights and that delegates should be allocated based on voting that took place in those states -- even though in Michigan, Obama’s name did not even appear on the ballot and uncommitted got 41% of the vote to Clinton’s 55%.

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Ickes repeated earlier contentions that there was no reason to "re do" the votes in Florida and Michigan and didn’t directly answer if they would participate in a re-vote in Michigan. Ickes also acknowledged that it would be possible for Clinton to lose pledged delegates but control a majority of the credentials committee, which ultimately decides if and how Florida’s and Michigan’s disputed delegations would be dealt with.

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/02/16/671358.aspx

[blm]

1. I'm waiting for the day McAuliffe who PUT that rule up in 2002 speaks for Clinton campaign

about this.

Gee - wonder WHY they don't have their EXPERT go on camera about this rule HE put into the DNC rules when HE was chairman?