Despite Public Posturing, Casey Rubber-Stamped Obama’s Agenda & Is Raising Obama Campaign Cash Behind Closed Doors

As the Pottsville Republican & Herald reports today, despite being among then-candidate Barack Obama’s earliest and most ardent supporters and rubber-stamping his party’s agenda 98 percent of the time in Washington, liberal Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) is now desperately attempting to distance himself from the President in advance of his 2012 reelection campaign:

Early and wholeheartedly, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey embraced the presidential candidacy of fellow Sen. Barack Obama in 2008. Casey’s endorsement gave Obama a badly needed boost at the outset of his six-day introductory tour before the Pennsylvania Democratic presidential primary. After Obama won the presidency, Casey signed on as one of the biggest supporters of the president’s agenda. But with both men facing a re-election campaigns next year, the embrace is loosening. In the last few months, Casey has started to oppose the president outright or developed more nuanced responses to events that differentiate him from Obama. Analysts say Casey wants to put some distance between himself and a president whose job approval ratings in Pennsylvania are poor… Casey has voted with his party in the Senate an average of 98 percent of the time since Obama took office, according to a Washington Post database on congressional votes…

But despite Casey’s desperate efforts to distance himself from President Obama publicly – including his refusal to appear side-by-side with the President in Pittsburgh last week to pitch Pennsylvanians on their massive new “stimulus” spending and tax hike proposal – Casey is all too glad to bundle campaign cash for the President’s reelection bid behind closed doors.  As the New York Times recently reported of Obama’s elite bundlers, “Mr. Obama has also gained help from some Democratic officials who backed him in 2008, like… Senator Robert P. Casey Jr., the Pennsylvania Democrat.”

“It speaks volumes that, even as he desperately tries to distance himself from President Obama in public, Bob Casey is busy raising cash for the Obama campaign behind closed doors,” said National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) spokesman Chris Bond.  “After voting for the Obama agenda 98 percent of the time in Washington, Casey needs to quit trying to have it both ways and start taking responsibility for his support of Obama’s reckless spending, record debt, and job-killing tax hikes.”