LOUNGE LIZZA
If
imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Media Matters
must be just blushing, based on the recent profile of House
Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa in the New
Yorker by its Washington correspondent Ryan
Lizza. After all, it appears Lizza took virtually the
entire Media Matters opposition
research file it had been pushing for months and
published it under his own name.
Media Matters’ “research” of its political opponents is
largely financed by leftist George Soros, and Issa
has been an ongoing target for the organization, in part, because
it believes Issa and his committee may begin to examine the
relationships between left-wing political groups like Media
Matters, MoveOn.org, Free Press, and Public Knowledge, among
others, and the Obama Administration and its political
fundraisers.
“If you look at the timing of many of Media Matters’
attacks with the agenda of the White House and the Obama
Administration and the then-leadership of Nancy
Pelosi, you see that there is coordination there,” says an
Oversight Committee staffer. “It’s not surprising that the chairman
is now Enemy No. 1 for the Obama shills in Washington.”
Media Matters had been pushing attacks against Issa for
months with little to no success. In fact, as months went by and
Issa, then ranking Republican on the committee, upped his attacks
on the unethical behavior inside the Obama Administration, and its
attempts to do through the regulatory process what it could not
achieve legislatively, Media Matters actually railed against its
friends in the media for not picking up its Issa sliming
efforts.
Now it appears Media Matters has found its best outlet for
its dirty work, a sleepy little weekly magazine out of New
York.
POLITICAL LOCK AND LOAD
For more than a week, the White House, several political
appointees inside the Department of Justice, and former Obama
campaign staffers associated with Organizing for America have been
coordinating on how President Barack
Obama’s administration can capitalize on the
Tucson shooting tragedy and the attack on Rep. Gabrielle
Giffords (D-Ariz.).
According to a White House source, conference calls on how
to message and politicize the attack began late in the evening
Washington time the day of the shooting. “Of course we weren’t
going to let this thing go,” says a White House staffer.
“Republicans are incapable of capitalizing on these kinds of events
because the policy positions for many of them on things like guns
tend to make them defensive. From the very beginning we sought to
tie the nutjob in Tucson to the tea partiers.”
Another White House aide, reading materials supplied by
the Department of Justice, cautioned against building an anti-tea
party and anti-Republican campaign around the shooter,
Jared Loughner. “You looked over the materials,
and it was clear he wasn’t a tea party guy or even a Republican. I
just didn’t see the upside, especially if the follow up stories
made clear he wasn’t who we were pushing friends in the media to
portray.”
But that didn’t stop friends of the White House from doing
its bidding, including pressing reporters to use Loughner’s middle
name, Lee, in press accounts.
“Every famous assassin has a middle name and the fact that
his was ‘Lee’ made it all the better,” says a former Obama 2008
campaign media consultant. “It isn’t like we had to work hard on
this one.”
Other Obama Administration attempts to pump up the
Loughner story included spreading misinformation initially reported
in several national media outlets that the troubled young man might
be a zealous pro-life advocate or was angry at Democrats’ blocking
of Obamacare repeal.
Last week’s “Together We Thrive” memorial service in
Tucson, where the President’s remarks were greeted with
enthusiastic cheering and applause, mirroring the politically
disastrous 2002 memorial service for Sen. Paul
Wellstone, was seeded with attendees drawn from volunteers
and friends of Arizona’s Organizing for America operation, the
former Obama grassroots organization that is now managed by the
Democratic National Committee.
Now, the White House is attempting to devise a media plan
should Giffords’ husband, Mark Kelly, fulfill his
responsibilities as commander of April’s Endeavour
mission.
“This is the kind of opportunity every administration
looks to take advantage of, not just us,” says the White House
staffer. “It’s nothing different than what the Bush Administration
tried to do with 9-11.”
