The Democratic war room is back in action, and it is aimed at Darrell Issa, the California Republican Congressman who heads the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
As reported by Politico, there is an almost unprecedented effort by Democrats to undermine Issa not for anything he does in Congress, but by trying to dig up supposedly negative facts against him and thereby force Issa to defend himself rather than carry on his congressional probes of the Obama administrations:
Democrats are understandably obsessed with Darrell Issa — he’s built himself up as a one-man investigative machine aimed straight at the Obama presidency.
But a handful of liberal political operatives in California — including a former Hillary Clinton hand — are taking their anti-Issa passion to a whole new level, launching a nonprofit group, a website and even paid media advertisements aimed at undermining and investigating the rabble-rousing chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
They say they’re leaving no stone unturned in digging into Issa’s personal and business history. This week, the group will reveal more than 100 pages about an investigation into a fire that burned down a building that housed his business in the early 1980s.
The launch of this group — which calls itself The Third Lantern, and is naming the website the Issa Files — is remarkable because it’s wholly focused on the activities of one lawmaker who has no immediate plans to run for higher office. The purpose of this new group is to make public documents more public, make life difficult for Issa and sow seeds of doubt on his investigations.
They plan to run TV advertisements and other paid media in the future, saying they already have a “significant commitment” of cash. A spokesman for Issa, Kurt Bardella, dismissed the effort as a “misguided and distasteful smear campaign against Chairman Issa.”
The group will be run by the principals of SCN Strategies, a San Francisco-based consulting firm that produced ads last cycle for California’s Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). One of those deeply involved is Averell “Ace” Smith — who ran Hillary Clinton’s successful 2008 California and Texas primary operations and is known as one of the more cutthroat political operatives in the business
Are you motivated for 2012 yet? You better get motivated, because they are.
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Comments
I'm not ready for 2012 yet. There's no viable candidate on the horizon and it may be necessary to run a TEA Party candidate if for no other reason that to show the elite the error of their ways. Sure, this might be cutting of your nose to spite your face but if you have cancer of the nose this is what you need to do.
Alinsky's rules of power tactics:
#13 Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. In conflict tactics there are certain rules that [should be regarded] as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and 'frozen.'…
"…any target can always say, 'Why do you center on me when there are others to blame as well?' When your 'freeze the target,' you disregard these [rational but distracting] arguments…. Then, as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all the 'others' come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target…'
"One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other."
#12. "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative."
Alinsky's third rule of ethics:
"The third rule of ethics of means and ends is that in war the end justifies almost any means..
Fix bayonets.
Bring it.
Martok, there are viable candidates all over the place, running for Congress.
What you would do is to cheer on the election of a conservative Congress while allowing Obama to keep the veto pen in the Oval Office so the conservative Congress is gelded before it even gets seated.
Yes, that would definitely be cutting off your nose to spite your face, and not in some medically necessary way.
If you think the Dem incivility is bad, wait until he butts heads against his own party's leadership just as he is about to succeed. He ought to give Peter King a call.
Erick Erickson of Red State is reporting that the Dems have blocked Peter King’s attempt at introducing an amendment that would defund the entire Obamacare bill and THE GOP LEADERSHIP IS SUPPORTING THE BLOCKAGE ON TECHNICAL REASONS.
Pardon me while I go bang my head against the wall. I would like to get all warm and fuzzy about the GOP but I can’t. They are WORSE than the Dems.
Do Republicans even know this Alinsky model? @viator is quoting the community organizer's/Leftists/Democrat's "bible" of how to destroy opposition.
They better be ready with the "counter-Rule 13" or Issa and Conservatives are going to suffer. Not that there is any there there – that doesn't matter. It is the MSM smear maching working hand-in-hand with such an obvious, poisonous personal attack group that will make the Conservatives impotent.
TEA Party people – this is NOT the time to relax. The Left NEVER relaxes.
I was always taught the left love whistle blowers.
Martok K'Trelan, Gee, I can see that you're not ready for 2012 yet, but it's pretty clear from this post that the left is not only thinking about it . . . they're acting on it!
And they are doing so in the usual nasty way, but much earlier.
Three things should be kept in mind about the opponents on the left.
They are ruthless.
They are relentless.
And, their overall strategy to hold the line this past election cycle failed. So, they WILL adjust.
One highly significant reason their strategy failed was simply because of constant exposure such as here and in dozens of other websites, throughout that two-year period.
The left's plan for too-heavy reliance on more traditional means for tipping public opinion in their favor during the 2010 campaign (i.e., paid media attacks aimed at attracting independent support) underestimated both the intensity and the focus of countervailing responses throughout the non-paid media, ones which quickly and repeatedly undermined their claims throughout the entire two year run-up period, thus preventing them from ever setting up their ads in the first place!
They got "Alinskied!" . . . for two years!
Tea Partiers took them on early and often, and the left's overall response was to desperately and risibly try to tag them with being a.) racists and b.) violent. Both of those efforts failed so miserably, that they turned people off.
There really were no good stories to use in ads because none of their negative narrative stuck, most notably, the "N" word story at the end of the healthcare debate. They all ended up having to run on defending their records!
"Not so fast!" the American public opined.
So, perhaps this information the Professor has posted represents a "window" on their adjustment . . . preparing to relentlessly attack key Republicans early and often. They have to know that once Darrell Issa begins actively spotlighting the fetid underbelly of the Obama Administration, Michael J. Mouse himself could begin running a credible campaign in 2012!
So Issa has to be hobbled, regardless of whether their is any truth at all to what they will say about him.
Issa is bad news and if the Republicans chose someone with more integrity to head the oversight committee, then this would not be necessary.
Issa will trample the rights of others for his own agenda. Should Democrats lie down and let him run roughshod, as he will?
MaCarthism is rampant on the left
oldschool26, one thing you'll quickly find out about this website is that you can't expect to make unfounded personal attacks on people without being challenged.
Heck, I might even be inclined to agree with your general statement that Darrell Issa may end up being "bad news" . . . for certain Democrats, that is!
But that certainly doesn't mean that it would be bad news for the country, no?
As for your other claim, supply us a credible basis for you saying he lacks integrity, or for your unsupported assertion that, "Issa will trample the rights of others for his own agenda."