“As I understand it, the message sent was clear: what happened before is yesterday’s news, we are willing to write it off as an honest difference of opinion on an issue important to Brian’s client.
But starting today, the rules are different: it is now a matter of whether people are seen as having the President’s best interests at heart, or not.”
By Paul Goldman
Once again, the power of the blogs, through their ability to convey information to the Mainstream media in this particular case, has been proven. My sources, generally reliable but to be fair, not big fans of Congressman Jim Moran, tell me that the Obama White House, admittedly through intermediaries at the capo level, has made the following clear as “crystal” to quote Tom Cruise in his great courtroom scene with Jack Nicholson: if Brian Moran gets to be Virginia Democratic Party Chair and he dares continue to lobby against the President or be associated with those lobbying against the President, then as Clemenza said in Godfather 1, “it’s time to go to the mattresses.”
The bottom line: Brian has been given a get-out-of-jail free card. But the longer he waits to make the obvious move, the greater his risk of seeing this story on MSNBC, and then someone on his side of the debate is going to have to walk the plank.
And guess who that is going to be?
Simply put, to have a Democratic Chair so openly thumb his nose at a Democratic President, and work against Obama on this particular issue – trying to stopping the President from doing what he thinks has to be done to protect minorities, veterans, and single moms among others from having their life ruined according to the United Negro College Fund – goes way over the line. Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton never permitted it. As an Obama friend said to me: Why do they think the rules are different for this President?
Obama’s folks have a solid point: Just because you may have the legal right to do something doesn’t make it right for a Chairman of the Democratic Party to do.
My response was this: “To be fair, I doubt if Brian saw his lobbying as anti-Obama, rather just a policy difference which happens all the time.”
Whatever, the most ironic thing is that Brian is now hurting his client. The Washington Post will be forced, if he refuses to budge, to give this situation front-page coverage in order to avoid Fox News and others from putting them in the hot seat for reasons that are well-known to Brian and others.
Fact: The Washington Post company has largely surviving off the profits it makes from it’s own for-profit college, one of the biggest receivers of federal tax dollars from defaulted student loans in the nation. Fox News says this makes the Post totally conflicted on this issue and prone to covering things up. It is one right ugly mess, with Bill O’Reilly just waiting to pounce along with Limbaugh.
Does Brian really think he, Senator Webb or Warner, or the VA DEM party, can gain if this thing goes viral? It would be lose-lose all around.
Right now, the equation is: All risk, no reward. The sooner Brian acknowledges that a Democratic Party chair can’t lobby against the President’s policy on for-profit colleges, the better chance he has of avoiding a news story that could win up crushing his hopes for future political office, except maybe in Utah.
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