Hey Darrell, what’s up?
Congratulations on your big day yesterday. Well played sir, well played indeed. I just want to make sure you boys don’t snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Your side did that before when you tried to impeach Bill Clinton for lying about a blow job. You got carried away and it blew up in your faces.
Remember the connection between goals, strategy and tactics. (I tried to tell this to the OWSers but they didn’t listen. See how that turned out?) Keep focused on your goal – to defeat Barack Obama. Your strategy is simple – cause maximum political damage to Barack Obama between now and November 6th. In the process you do not want to damage yourselves.
Nobody is gonna get impeached over this. At most you’ll get a resignation or two, but you’re probably better off without any. You WANT Eric Holder to stay there as Attorney General. If he resigns the media will declare that the scandal is over.
Fast and Furious is about incompetence. Someone in the Obama administration came up with a bird-brain scheme to sell guns to Mexican drug gangs. The scheme went full-frontal FUBAR, thousands of guns went south of the border and a bunch of people died, including U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. After the fuck-up came the cover-up.
The tactic to employ here is the one you’re using – use your Congressional oversight power to drag this scandal out into the light of day. Rub the administration’s collective nose in it. But in this case less is more. Let the facts speak for themselves.
This will take some internal discipline. Your side needs to avoid grandstanding and speechifying. You want to be talking about “justice for Brian Terry” and “accountability.” Keep mentioning “thousands of guns” and “Mexican drug gangs.” Keep asking “What is the Obama administration hiding?” but don’t speculate on the answer – let the voters do that.
This is an ugly scandal. The Lewinsky scandal was salacious gossip but nobody died. This one ended in multiple murders. Keep it simple and don’t get in your own way. The media won’t help you the way they did with Monica and Bill. Don’t get distracted by what the Democrats do or say. Just keep pushing the facts out there and skip the constitutional showdowns.
Keep your eyes on the prize.
The Crawdad Hole 
They should hire you as their strategist!
Agree- the goal is to keep the scandal front and center from now until November. Without coming across as sanctimonious, partisan inquisitors looking for victims for the rack.
When do they go on their summer recess and how do they keep it out there while they are “at home, listening to their constituents”?
The very funny reactions of Republican Congress-critters exclaiming that they never dreamed this reached into the White House until the prezzy invoked executive privilege are a hoot to watch. Claiming that they never even considered that the prez or his closest advisers would be involved in something that resulted in the MURDER of a federal agent and hundreds of Mexican nationals is a clever way to accuse and insinuate all kinds of nasty stuff. It is well done.
I agree.. You should send this to all the GOP members of Congress. Maybe some of them will even read it. They should. It is what needs to be done.
There was nothing on CNN (mobile) this morning. FoxNews(mobile) covered it. I don’t even look at the others.
Excellent piece, excellent advice. You did, however, forget to mention the “Bushdidit” part, and how Issa might respond to that. Read this interesting piece this morning….
http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/progressives-blame-president-bush-for.html
Wikipedia:
Obama took office in January 2009
I didn’t read the article . . . yet. but last night on Fox (Hannity -ugh!) a Dem spokesperson (don’t know who) blamed Bush completely.
But, but, but… Bush started it.
Sounded just like a 6 year old.
The May numbers are in and our Preezy has a spending problem with his campaign too. Spent more than they took in. Most of his travel is paid for by combining fundraisers with official events. Juicy article, names celebs at Clooney event.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-20/obama-spends-more-than-he-raises-as-aides-see-romney-advantage.html
Boom — Holder engaged in knowingly not knowing. Isn’t this so he could use plausible deniabilty?
Good advice. Tread lightly and make Obama look small & petty when the media tries to paint *him* as the victim in this investigation.
Althouse:
Don’t forget WHICH GUNS they were letting walk. There were not .38 caliber revolvers, but big long guns, and handguns that could piece armor. Specifically they were letting walk AK 47 types (the least offensive type) BARRETT .50 calibers, and FN Five-sevens (the handgun that can pierce armor).
Of these, the Barret is the most egregious. Here’s a picture of the bullet it uses:
It’s the bullet on the right that is just over 5 inches long. It can pierce armor and tanks, and can be shot with accuracy from over a mile away so that the target will never hear it coming. It is a war gun. Full stop.
My husband helped me figure out these details today and they add a chilling new frame to the purpose of “Fast & Furious.” 2020 of these types of guns walked. Less than 700 have been recovered.
For comparison, the bullet on the left is of the style our soldiers use in the M-16s. The middle bullet is the kind one would use to shoot deer (.30-06).
A .50 bullet will punch through any part of a car except the engine block. Ballistic vests won’t even slow them down. They are not made for hunting.
Someone should write a blog post about this part of it. It’s not getting enough coverage.
You’re off to a good start.
It’s scheduled to post at noon EDT.
IIRC from my shooting days those aren’t bullets, those are cartridges. The bullet is the pointy thing at the top; the bottom section–the shell casing–holds the powder charge.
No Obamacare ruling today
Do you think they are planning to make the announcement at the very last moment so t hey can run home and avoid the fallout?
That’s also what happened in WI, the dems did not respect Walker as a worthy opponent in either races he’s been involved in. They didn’t see him as having the ability to be well-prepared for debates (as he was), or be able to stay on message; he also waged an effective campaign across the state (in outlying areas). Instead they just saw him as the Koch bros lapdog. A big mistake IMO. It’s also the big mistake the dems keep making about the repubs and the Tea Party. Just make them see like whacko elitists and discount their message, instead of addressing it. Now Obama is being forced to address a repub’s message.
Even not knowing much about Romney and not being particularly impressed with what I’ve seen I still find him more human, less wooden than Kerry. And I don’t find picking Kerry as Romney’s stand-in, in ‘rehearsal’ debates with Obama, an obvious choice.
Washington Examiner gives more reasons as to why it’s a bad bet:
(My emphasis.)
I agree that the R’s shouldn’t be delving into the “why” of Fast and Furious. Let the public and the non- traditional media do that.
When this story first broke, I poo-pooed the idea of it being a deliberate attempt to create a “gun crisis” in order to set the stage for and justify stricter gun legislation. Now? I’m not so sure . The more details that came out, the more damning it is. If you read Pavlich’s (very well documented) book, and read the documents released, listen to the gun shop recordings, it becomes difficult to see what the purpose could have been, if not that.
This program was very different than the one under Bush. You can hear it in the unease of the gun shop owners – who had cooperated all along with Bush’s version. After it began changing, they were the first to get very suspicious. They questioned the new protocols, and were told STFU. It is thanks to these helpful, concerned, law-abiding gun shop owners (as well as the ATF whistle-blowers) that the program came to light. Because some of them, despite being told to disregard keeping names and gun serial numbers (as they had done under Bush) began to keep their own private records of what guns were sold to whom on what dates. They KNEW something hinky was now going on, and were uneasy as hell with it.
It’s true that the safest and best political course for Issa is to stay away from the speculating ” why?”. But I don’t have to.
And the more I look at this, I cannot for the life of me figure out how the hell it was supposed to work if it was a crime fighting operation.
1) Force gun shop owners to sell to known cartel members
2) not only make no effort to track, but actively discourage any tracking.
3) also completely cut Mexican law enforcement on the other end out of the loop.
4) ????????????
If anyone can offer me another feasible explanation of what the purpose of this program was, or how it was supposed to work, I’m all ears.
It could be just as simple as it was a major FU for the Obama admin. They took over a program started under Bush, modified it, and when evidence of it failing occurred, they began a huge endeavor to cover it up. It’s even more damning because Obama convinced progs that he’d be the most transparent prez evah.
Just this explanation is enough to p’o people. Think of the effect on Latinos in the US — Obama knowingly engaged in a prog that resulted in the death of over 300 Mexicans, and an ICE agent of Hispanic descent.
I’ll buy that only if you can give me some plausible law enforcement reason for the modifications to the program.
What possible reason could there be to deliberately stop the tracking of the guns? Because they did not “oops” FAIL to track them, they made a conscious and affirmative decision NOT to do so.
Please explain to me a scenario under which that decision makes any sense, or has some goal in mind other than simply arming the cartels. What “failed”? What was the objective that it failed to accomplish?
There’s evidence already of the gun control thing. I missed it the first time around and found it yesterday: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-57338546-10391695/documents-atf-used-fast-and-furious-to-make-the-case-for-gun-regulations/
Holy fuck. That is damning. It’s the old prog rope-a-dope. Lets create/exacerbate a problem then step forward with our handy solution!
Manufactured Shock Doctrine in action.
SHV on Hillaryis44 did bringnup another scenario. There’s a theory that it was deliberate arming of one cartel, in order to counteract another cartel that was becoming too powerful. That’s the only alternative explanation so far that comes close to fitting the facts. That one is a possibility. Which would make this along the lines of Iran/Contra.
One thing is certain. “It was a law enforcement/sting that was botched and went awry” does not fit the facts in any way shape or form.
Maddow last night was all in with desperate mocking of that exact scenario. That Obama sold guns in order to create chaos and regulate guns. But when you look at the facts that’s exactly the conclusion you are left with.
She was trying to state that since Obama hasn’t moved on gun laws and clearly any thoughts that he would move on them with this program is a crazy FoxNews conspiracy.
http://leanforward.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/20/12326260-holder-contempt-votes-outlandish-origins?lite
Bet she had no alternative explanation for why they made an affirmative decision to STOP tracking them, though.
DO NOT TRACK THESE GUNS is not a “botch”, it’s a plan. Tell me
what that plan was then, Rachel. I’m all ears.
Oh and she ties the conspiracy to some blogger who said to break Dem windows back during the health care bill. Which I missed last night channel surfing into the segment.
She was more desperate than I thought….it took 9 min of build up with the conspiracy blogger. Wow.
It is entirely possible that it was both. Arm one cartel as a counter-balance tomthe other, then handily blame it on stupid redneck gun shop owners.
I frankly wouldn’t put anything past the Obama crew. And one thing that HAS puzzled me in all this is the lack of real outcry on the part of Mexico. Why are they not screaming bloody murder?
Have you heard about this??
“Wayne Madsen Reports
December 9-11, 2011 — Giffords, Roll Hit a Planned Twin Assassination”
Pelosi is now claiming that the contempt vote is part of Republican’s attempts at voter suppression.
The woman who helped suppress the votes of millions of Dem voters.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2018490255_apusfastandfuriouspelosi.html
I sent a link to this post to Darrell Issa. why not give him something to think about