Chris Matthews had GOP Strategist John Feehery and Democratic strategist Steve McMahon on Hardball Thursday night to discuss how Darrell Issa (R-CA) is overreaching in his Obama scandal mongering, and how the GOP told him basically to shut it.
But it doesn’t look as if Darrell is going to heed their advice, since he went whining to Politico about how mean President Obama is to “vilify” him (try not to laugh). And Republicans are showing alarming signs that they are just as capable of denial today as they were during the 2012 campaign.
Watch here:
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CHRIS MATTHEWS: GOP leaders are concerned that the sometimes unpredictable chairman (Issa) could jeopardize the biggest gift handed to them in months, public outrage over the IRS scandal, combined with questions over Benghazi. They think issa should stop personalizing the scandals by insulting Obama and his aides and focus on the facts.” and are they right to be concerned? That’s our big question.
JOHN FEEHERY (GOP): … Issa has driven a lot of stories effectively. When he says Jay Carney is a liar, he makes the story about him. He has to keep on the straight and narrow, keep it straight to the facts and not make this about him.
STEVE MCMAHON (DEM): John summarized it perfectly correctly. He’s more like Burton than the responsible subcommittee chairman John was describing. The problem for the Republicans, the reason they smacked him down, this is how brands are made. The Republican Party is trying to run a campaign in 2014, and if they become known as the overreaching parties, the party that is known for coarse insults, it’s not going to go very well for them.
Snip
JOHN FEEHERY (GOP): There’s an art form to this. Some of the work they’re doing is kind of dull. For Darrell Issa is really good at actually getting the media attention and pushing the story forward. The problem is when you go over the top, and when you kind of promise more than the story has. So that’s why you have to really have some good lawyers and stick to the facts, keep driving it forward.
Darrell Issa is good at getting media attention to drive the Republican narrative that President Obama is not a strong leader, that he’s ineffective. That is Issa’s job, and he screwed it up when he called Carney a liar. He also screwed it up when he again accused the White House of being less than truthful on key subjects and refused to apologize for his Carney attack while speaking to Politico, “Issa added that ‘the White House has tried to vilify me rather than getting into the facts.’” (Issa thinks he can get away with this by saying “White House” instead of “Obama”.)
You can see the problem with Issa. Darrell Issa thinks he can sell himself as the victim of President Obama, while he is accusing the White House of being a liars with zero proof.
Brash, obnoxious, classless car thief Darrell Issa is a wildcard for Republicans, but this is what they get for choosing to depend on someone with such obviously bad judgment to drive their narrative. Who else would have taken the job to lie and point fingers constantly, when they themselves have a criminal background? You’d have to be densely arrogant to do that.
Politico noted that Republicans are worried about Issa destroying their Obama destruction strategy:
GOP leaders are concerned that the sometimes unpredictable chairman could jeopardize the biggest gift handed to them in months — public outrage over the IRS scandal, combined with questions over Benghazi. They think Issa should stop personalizing the scandals by insulting Obama and his aides and focus on the facts.
While the strategists were going back and forth, the Democratic strategist reminded the Republican strategist of the results over Republican overreach when they went after Clinton, and the Republican strategist blurted, “That’s not what happened!”
If you want to know why Republicans keep banging their head into the same Overreach Wall, it’s because once again, they believe their own spin:
STEVE MCMAHON (DEM): Think before you speak. Remember, it was Dan Burton who pushed the committee and pushed the impeachment hearings to the point where the American people rejected the Republicans, the Republican leadership, and Newt Gingrich–
CHRIS MATTHEWS: He was the guy accusing the Clintons of murder, wasn’t he?
STEVE MCMAHON (DEM): Accuses the Clintons of everything. He was the beginning of the overreach for the Republicans that culminated in an impeachment hearing and resulted in Republicans losing seats and Newt Gingrich being gone.
JOHN FEEHERY (GOP): That’s not actually what happened. 2008 they lost the majority.
STEVE MCMAHON (DEM): I’m talking about 1998.
JOHN FEEHERY (GOP): 1998 they kept the House. They lost 52 seats.
(That’s what Steve said. So why is John arguing? Because the GOP strategist doesn’t like to remember the fact that overreach cost them 52 seats in 1998.)
STEVE MCMAHON (DEM): They lost Newt Gingrich.
JOHN FEEHERY (GOP): They lost Newt Gingrich. They kept control of the House. I think the bigger point here is that you need, and Greg Walden is exactly right. I talked to Greg Walden about this. You need to be careful on these explosive allegations. If you mishandle them, they’ll explode in your hand.
The Republican Party realized that Darrell Issa was making things personal against Obama and his staff, and that people generally like Obama (while loathing Congress and thinking Republicans to be extreme obstructionist). The GOP thinks they have “winners” in the IRS scandal and Benghazi (notice that their “winners” are always dramas and scandals, and never policy ideas), and they don’t want the ethically challenged Darrell Issa to mess it up, so he’s been kicked out of the public eye until he can get it together.
Republicans are eying their big prize of making Obama look incompetent, and they don’t want some brash car thief to destroy things for them. They’re so close, and it only took them five years!
Surely if they paint Obama as incompetent, no one will remember that they drove the economy over the cliff and into a deep recession with reckless spending and deregulation, starved children while giving the rich another tax break, lost the mantle of national security experts to Obama, fought against jobs for Americans and killed basic infrastructure rebuilding, stuck it to veterans again and again, never even tried to find Osama bin Laden, spent the last five years trying to regulate a woman’s uterus while actively seeking to restrict freedom from gays, minorities, and immigrants…..





Nefer
Jun. 7th, 2013 at 2:40 pm
“They think Issa should stop personalizing the scandals by insulting Obama and his aides and focus on the facts.”
Teensy little problem with this brilliant plan. If they “focus on the facts”, they have nothing.
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Rock Mollica
Jun. 9th, 2013 at 10:11 am
This will be the summer of invented so called scandals. Issa is the new Newt, a Tea Party lap dog who has no moral compass or integrity. Examine his criminal record, his plan for the USPS and what good he has don, or not, for this Nation..
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K
Jun. 7th, 2013 at 3:23 pm
Remember: Count to 5 before you lob the grenade…or was it 7…? ;-)
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Shiva
Jun. 7th, 2013 at 5:01 pm
The Republicans put Darrell Issa and his position because they knew he would go after Obama. And it’s obvious he went after Obama over everything he could find and he had to make up too much stuff along the way. He is an expert at using words to blame people and giving people incorrect impressions.
The White House needs to bury him
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majii
Jun. 7th, 2013 at 6:40 pm
Issa got his feelings hurt because the WH gave him push back on his lie that “Jay Carney is a paid liar?” How thin-skinned of Issa who has used his position to become the biggest, most insufferable bully in Congress.
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djchefron
Jun. 7th, 2013 at 6:49 pm
I’m still waiting for those public hearings of Thomas Pickering’s testimony on BENGHAZIIIIIII
Since they were promised after the private hearings
Well Mr. car thief will we have them because we want the answers to BENGHAZIIIII
Maybe the posters who had defended the car thief and this farce would chime in and let us know if we will have them because as they told us we all want the truth about BENGHAZIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
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Linda1961
Jun. 7th, 2013 at 7:34 pm
Gopers are delusional if they think that Benghazi and the IRS doing its job are winners for them. They aren’t scandals, just because the gop thinks that they are.
Good point in that all the gop has are dramas and “scandals,” no policy. They are worried that Issa is overreaching, but just trying to make these dramas into scandals is overreaching.
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majii
Jun. 7th, 2013 at 9:43 pm
I read on TPM earlier today, Linda, that the FL head of the GOP is advising republicans in the state to talk up these fake scandals and use them in their re-election campaigns. I find it very troubling that the GOP has to resort to pushing fake scandals they’ve created to win elections instead of being able to run on their policies and/or on the laws they’ve passed which will help us in some way. I’ve also been reading comments written by republicans on several blogs that indicate their displeasure with the republicans. It seems that the saner republicans are aware that these scandals are fake, and that the republican politicians are using them to avoid doing their the job they were elected to do–govern. I think these fake scandals may turn out to be detrimental to republican politicians. It seems they’re making a huge gamble that most Americans will accept that they’re real and accept them as a substitute for them not doing their job. This is a very dangerous game to play.
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Inez
Jun. 7th, 2013 at 9:57 pm
What if anything has Issa done to earn his salary? How many bills has he sponsored or cosponsored??
Unlike many elected to Congress, this man’s only objective is to cut down the principles governing our country. Let’s get him out of office.,
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azportsider
Jun. 8th, 2013 at 9:08 am
What? He isn’t just a piece of GOPer performance ‘art?’ Who knew?
Actually, I kind of like Issa. After all, no one’s done more to undermine the GOPer ‘rebranding’ effort lately than he has. The GOPers are all Issas, and the more he displays just how obnoxious they are, the better for Democrats.
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djchefron
Jun. 8th, 2013 at 9:35 am
I think Steve King of Iowa would like to have a word with you for the title of the most obnoxious.He introduced a amendment that would deport the children of undocumented workers.It passed with just about every republican voting for it.The punchline is that in 14 republicans districts Hispanics make up a 1/4 of the voters.We only need 17 to take the house.
That is all
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Sue
Jun. 7th, 2013 at 10:28 pm
The Republicans are becoming the laughing stock of the country. They think the American people are stupid, and, as we proved in November, we are far from stupid. The Republican party needs a complete overhaul, if they even stand a chance of regaining any strength. Stop the witch hunt, and do the job you were elected to do to help this country, not hurt it any more than you have already!!!!!!!!!!
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ynotryme
Jun. 7th, 2013 at 10:32 pm
I’m willing to bet President Obama has been thinking A****** even if he hasn’t said it.
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djchefron
Jun. 7th, 2013 at 10:41 pm
I ‘m willing to bet that most sane Americans have been thinking a lot about the car thief and asshole would be one of the more amicable one
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azportsider
Jun. 8th, 2013 at 9:12 am
I’d guess that secretly PBO’s been thanking Issa. Everytime Issa opens his mouth he makes Democrats look like the adults in the room.
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TYBANDIT
Jun. 8th, 2013 at 1:05 am
Congressman Issa,please,proceed!
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DFS
Jun. 11th, 2013 at 12:09 pm
Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except DEATH and TAXES.
—Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy, 1789
Who knew that the same government agency would oversee both, death and taxes
There is a solution… FAIRTAX.ORG
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