It’s all over the news that Mark Penn has resigned (been forced out? fired?) as Chief Strategist for Hillary Clinton’s campaign because of his professional ties supporting a Columbian trade deal that Hillary opposes. Basically, her campaign differed in position from his real job as CEO of Burson-Marsteller, a Public Relations firm. Well, they fired him, he’s no longer involved in the campaign, so the conflict of interest is over, right? Wrong.

What else could you expect from a campaign strategist who specializes in spin, than more spin. Sure, he’s no longer the “Chief Campaign Strategist”, but he is still one of her top advisers and his company, Burson-Marsteller, is still doing the polling for the Clinton campaign. I could be wrong, but that sure doesn’t sound like getting fired. It sounds to me like he just had to step back in to the shadows a bit for fear of hurting the campaign that he has orchestrated. This fact seems to be something that mainstream media has been leaving out and instead going forward with the “he’s fired, lets move on” story. For lack of a better term, that’s complete bullshit. If you’re going to fire someone for a conflict of interest, fire someone for a conflict on interest. Don’t keep them on the payroll in a similar capacity and change their title to look less important.

If we’ve learned anything from Karl Rove and George W. Bush, it’s that sleazy campaign tactics do, in fact, get you elected. I just hope that it is too little too late for Hillary to sleaze her way in to the Whitehouse.