Loved the Clinton scandal-manufacturing? You'll love this!

[SirNitram]

Link

If there's one congressional aide White House officials might wind up fearing most, it's Larry Brady.

He's all but unknown, but Brady is the secret weapon for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). As minority staff director of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Brady stands ready to wield almighty subpoena power if Republicans seize control of the chamber in November and make Issa chairman of the panel.

Handing subpoena power to Issa and his staff would be the White House's "worst nightmare," says Don Goldberg, a crisis-management expert at Qorvis Communications.

"The administration underestimates Larry Brady's effectiveness at its own peril," says Goldberg, who once served as Democratic deputy staff director of the same panel and did damage control for President Bill Clinton. "He knows how to pick the issues that resonate, and get media attention with or without fingerprints."

As head of the GOP staff on the oversight panel, Brady has been at the forefront of exposing controversies that, if nothing else, have caused political headaches for the Obama administration. They include allegations that the White House tried to bribe Democratic challengers in this year's Pennsylvania and Colorado Senate races to drop out. Issa also released a report that he said documented ACORN's aggressive political support for Democratic candidates. The report helped make the community organizing group a hot-button political issue and a target for conservative activists. Later, Congress cut off federal funding to the organization.

On a more bipartisan level, Brady has led the GOP's side of investigations into a sex-and- drugs scandal at the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service and the Obama administration's response to the BP oil spill.

If, come January when a new Congress convenes, Brady finds himself the majority staff director, expect to see a parade of people appearing before the committee. He tried to avoid naming names, but it's clear he has at least two Cabinet-level officials already in mind.

"The accusations against Bush were rampant with [Alberto S.] Gonzales. But you know, there's not a similar kind of indignation against the current attorney general," Brady said, referring to Eric H. Holder Jr.

Holder should have investigated ACORN, he said, as well as allegations that the White House dangled job offers to Andrew Romanoff of Colorado and Rep. Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania in order to persuade them to drop out of Senate Democratic primary races. "He should have looked at the Sestak-Romanoff issue, if for no other reason than to exonerate his boss, unless he didn't think he could," Brady said. (The Justice Department declined to respond directly to Brady's comment.)

Another Obama official who should worry if Republicans gain control? "We'd probably get Geithner here," Brady said of Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner.

Would he help his boss use the committee to investigate President Obama, much the way a former chairman, Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), did during the Clinton administration? "No, that's grandstanding," he said.

At 71, Brady isn't your usual congressional staffer. He was an assistant secretary of commerce in the Reagan administration. He ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in his home state, New Hampshire, in 1980 and waged a GOP primary race for the House in 1992, when he lost by 314 votes.

"I'm not a poster child for early retirement," Brady said. Kurt Bardella, Issa's press secretary, joked, "He's like a great-great- great-grandfather figure to us."

Deliberative, soft-spoken and professorial -- he finished the course work for a doctorate but not his dissertation -- Brady comes off as a polar opposite of the media-focused Issa.

"You don't want someone just like you in these roles," said former congressman Tom Davis (R-Va.), who has known Brady for more than 40 years.

The two go back to the Senate in the early '60s, when Davis was a teenage page and Brady was his supervisor in the Senate Republican cloakroom. Decades later, Brady worked for Davis on the Government Reform Committee, as it was then known, which Davis chaired.

"You don't want someone there who is going to be quick on the draw," Davis added. "They have to be judicious in how they utilize the subpoena power."

And if things do break his party's way, Brady wishes his targets no hard feelings.

He added: "It's not personal; it's issue-oriented."

If it can be contorted enough by scam artists, expect the media to be good little sternographers and dutifully report how Acorn Obama offered to help smuggle humans give someone a job. And when it's revealed to be untrue, expect them to never mention it.

[PeZook]

Heh, funny...we have somebody like that in our politics, too!

We also have MPs who drive fast behind police convoys for convenience and cuss out the officers when they're stopped, though.

EDIT: Also, in an unrelated note...I have to admire the PR coup that resulted in all US media calling the Republicans the "GOP". It's like they legitimately are God's Own Party!

[adam_grif]

Doesn't GOP = Grand Old Party?

[Ryushikaze]

PeZook, it's short for 'Grand Old Party' not 'God's own', and usually is used because people are lazy. It also ignores that the Republican party of only 100 years ago is absolutely unlike the Republican party of the modern day.
Compare and contrast Republican Teddy Roosevelt, to any republican today.
Yeah. They want to claim Lincoln and Teddy as 'theirs' without having to act in any way following their examples.

[PeZook]

PeZook, it's short for 'Grand Old Party' not 'God's own', and usually is used because people are lazy. It also ignores that the Republican party of only 100 years ago is absolutely unlike the Republican party of the modern day.

Ah, I didn't know that. I was honestly convinced it meant "God's Own Party"

Yeah. They want to claim Lincoln and Teddy as 'theirs' without having to act in any way following their examples.

But...Lincoln was responsible for the War Of Northern Agression!

[Gil Hamilton]

Ah, I didn't know that. I was honestly convinced it meant "God's Own Party"

God's Own Party may not be technically correct, but it's still pretty appropriate a description about how many Republicans see things.

[Coyote]

I tend to refer to it as "Gathering Of Pigs" more and nore, nowadays.

But, yeah, it is supposed to be Grand Old Party.

Pigs, however, love to play in the mud, and it is telling that they are already preparing how to "get back" at the Democrats once they come back into power again. Sweet roasted Jesus on a stick, we are becoming such a fucking Banana Republic. New regime comes in, first they do is witchhunt the previous regime and smear any of its members that remain. Rinse & repeat.

[Einzige]

Someone's never heard of Donald Segretti, who makes this generation of Republican rat-fuckers look amateur in comparison.

http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkfra ... kid=100379

A woman was hired to run naked in front of Muskie's Florida hotel room shouting, "I love Ed Muskie". Stink bombs were released at Muskie picnics and in his campaign headquarters. Segretti placed an order for 200 pizzas to be delivered to a Muskie fund-raising dinner in Washington, DC. Spies and covert operators were hired to work inside the Muskie campaign. Muskie's campaign manager later said that the theft of a major scheduling program created a very serious disruption.

The most serious "dirty trick" against Muskie, however, came from an unidentified source. Shortly before the New Hampshire primary, a letter appeared in the Manchester Union Leader which had purportedly been written by someone from Florida. The letter described a person asking Muskie what he knew about blacks. Muskie's reported response was that Maine did not have blacks, but instead had Canucks (persons of French Canadian ancestry). The event was described in such a way as to imply Muskie's amused contempt for both ethnic groups. Accompanying the letter was an editorial entitled "Sen. Muskie Insults Franco-Americans". The next day the same newspaper reprinted an item from Newsweek in which Muskie's wife was quoted saying to reporters, "Let's tell dirty jokes".

Muskie made a speech in front of the Manchester Union Leader building in which he denied the truth of "The Canuck Letter" and called the editor a "gutless coward" for attempting to smear his wife. As he delivered his speech, however, Muskie lost his composure, breaking down into tears of grief or rage. The editor of the Union Leader made the statement that Muskie's behavior indicated "he's not the man that many of us want to have his finger on the nuclear button". Muskie's dismal performance in subsequent primaries led him to withdraw from the election.

Hubert Humphrey was also the target of some of Segretti's pranks. The most famous, perhaps, was the distribution of an invitation through Milwaukee's black ghettos which read: "FREE — All you can eat lunch with beer, wine or soda! With Senator Hubert H. Humphrey. Lorne Greene. Mrs. Martin Luther King." Many voters were undoubtedly resentful when none of the above materialized. Most of the propaganda against Humphrey, however, attempted to link him with Johnson's responsibility for the Vietnam War. Evidently an unpopular "radical" like George McGovern was Nixon's ideal opponent.

Segretti single-handedly orchestrated the 1972 landslide. Modern Republicans wish they were so ballsy - Atwater, Ailes, Rove, etc. are absolutely juvenile next to him. As for myself, I don't believe a single word I hear from any partisan sources, particularly Republican.

[Guardsman Bass]

"The administration underestimates Larry Brady's effectiveness at its own peril," says Goldberg, who once served as Democratic deputy staff director of the same panel and did damage control for President Bill Clinton. "He knows how to pick the issues that resonate, and get media attention with or without fingerprints."

He'll have to be good, since otherwise we'll just get a repeat of what happened when Congress was trying to subpoena Bush officials - the Bush officials would just ignore them.

[Johonebesus]

I tend to refer to it as "Gathering Of Pigs" more and nore, nowadays.

But, yeah, it is supposed to be Grand Old Party.

Pigs, however, love to play in the mud, and it is telling that they are already preparing how to "get back" at the Democrats once they come back into power again. Sweet roasted Jesus on a stick, we are becoming such a fucking Banana Republic. New regime comes in, first they do is witchhunt the previous regime and smear any of its members that remain. Rinse & repeat.

Except that when Democratic regimes come in, they immediately reject calls to investigate republicans for their admitted crimes, like domestic spying or torture. Clinton officially ended the investigation in the Iran-Contra matter, Pelosi took impeachment "off the table" in 2007, Obama has said he wants to "look forward, not back."

He'll have to be good, since otherwise we'll just get a repeat of what happened when Congress was trying to subpoena Bush officials - the Bush officials would just ignore them.

That's assuming the Democrats grow a spine and the republicans turn cowardly. You do realize Congress has the power to enforce subpoenas and order arrests, right?

[Guardsman Bass]

That's assuming the Democrats grow a spine and the republicans turn cowardly. You do realize Congress has the power to enforce subpoenas and order arrests, right?

Technically, yes (although the only enforcement official they have direct control over is the Master-at-Arms).

In reality, there's very little chance that they'll actually be able to do so. The Democrats couldn't do it when they had control over both bodies of Congress and a very, very strong incentive to do so, so what makes you think Republicans will be able to do it with even less control over Congress*?

*It's basically impossible for the Republicans to get control of both the Senate and House this election year unless they win literally every Senate seat out there for the taking, which isn't going to happen.

[Johonebesus]

In reality, there's very little chance that they'll actually be able to do so. The Democrats couldn't do it when they had control over both bodies of Congress and a very, very strong incentive to do so, so what makes you think Republicans will be able to do it with even less control over Congress*?

The Democrats couldn't do it because they were spineless and made no effort. They may have had good political motivation to really fight the administration, but for some reason decided not to. I wouldn't put it past the republicans to send the Sergeant-at-Arms with a couple of Capitol Police and a pair of handcuffs to confront their targets. Even if they fail to actually take them in, they will howl and scream about Democrats ignoring the rule of law, and the media will eat it up without reminding us of Bush's last two years. The republicans will fight tooth and nail against their opponents, and Democrats won't.

Never, never underestimate the Democrats' self destructive tendencies. Remember less than two years ago how the republican party was doomed, it couldn't recover, its current coalition had to fragment? Republicans sometimes lose, but the Democrats seem to win as much by default as their own virtue.