Teddy Apoplectic Over Caroline's Apologia

When Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg made her first attempt to withdraw from consideration for the Hillary seat in the Senate, multiple sources close to her cited her uncle's falling ill at the Congressional Inaugural luncheon as reported by the New York Times and New York Post. Well, the Lion of Liberalism, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) is furious over this lame excuse from dropping out of the New York Senate sweepstakes.

Those in Senator Kennedy's camp have told Time that "It made him look at death's door". Caroline knew that her uncle was prone to suffering from occasional seizures after his brain surgery but that generally he is doing well. Using Teddy's unfortunate incident at the Inaugural luncheon may have been a sympathy inducing distraction from Caroline's real personal reasons from withdrawing from consideration from the Senate seat, but depicting her uncle as being on a downward spiral is thought to impede on Kennedy's impact for comprehensive health care legislation in the Senate.

Later, staffers for both Caroline and Teddy tried to downplay the family fracas. Caroline's aide directly denied that Senator Kennedy's illness was the reason for Caroline dropping out. A source close to Senator Kennedy insisted that he was not upset with the Caroline people as the statements did not come from her. No politico tries to shape a story by having unsourced aides being quoted, right?

Personally, I think that staffers for the nine-term Senator are sensitive to his legacy as being a leader for universal health care and did not want ailment innuendo from a flaky family member to prevent him from being a legislative player.