David Corn: Secret tape of Groundswell lobbying Boehner and Issa on Benghazi

[blm]

Groundswell: A Secret Tape Reveals How It Lobbied Boehner and Issa on Benghazi

As Mother Jones revealed last week, Groundswell, the hush-hush right-wing strategy group partly led by Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, wanted to hype the Benghazi tragedy into a full-fledged scandal for the Obama administration, as part of its "30 front war" on the president and progressives. A secret audio tape of one of Groundswell's weekly meetings shows that prominent members of the group pressed House Speaker John Boehner and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the chair of the House oversight committee, to expand the Benghazi investigation and make this supposed scandal a top-priority for congressional Republicans. This recording indicates Groundswell's mission extends beyond message coordination to scandal-stoking.

The tape has been posted at Crooks and Liars, a progressive web site, and it captured the first 20 minutes of Groundswell's May 8 meeting. (The site does not say how the recording was obtained.) The meeting opened with a prayer ("Father, we thank you for the opportunity to gather here as free Americans&quot , and a roll call was taken. Among those present were former GOP Rep. Allen West, Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, Jerry Boykin of the Family Research Council, Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, Stephen Bannon of Breitbart News, and Ginni Thomas. Catherine Engelbrecht, a founder of True the Vote, led the meeting, and the first order of business was a report on the Benghazi controversy from Boykin and Gaffney.

The pair reported on meetings they had held the previous night with Boehner and Issa. The two Groundswellers had encouraged the lawmakers to set up a special committee to investigate the attacks on the US facilities in Benghazi. Boykin, according to the recording, noted that Boehner had said he wanted the process "to play out" first, apparently meaning that he wasn't yet ready to step up the GOP Benghazi campaign. Boehner, Boykin recounted, had expressed the concern that were he to create such a committee, the media would cover it as a political stunt designed to bring down Obama.
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http://m.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/07/groundswell-secret-tape-boehner-issa-benghazi

[Pretzel_Warrior]

1. wow. Groundswell may be the stupidest cabal in the history of cabals.

they've gona few months and are already being completely neutralized.

unless this front his hiding the REAL Groundswell. (throwing that in for the eternally paranoid).

[russspeakeasy]

3. I am a practicing paranoid. I'll never get it 100% right with

you looking over my shoulder all the time.

[JHB]

9. If you really want to feed the paranoia, say the recording was provided by...

...Karl Rove (who the Groundswillers hate for not being pure enough). Hell, maybe he did!

[neverforget]

11. the rw doesnt need to be smart as they have a lot of money and

media to catapult the propaganda. Quantity has a quality all its own.

[bettyellen]

17. Quantity has a quality all its own. Well said.

[Rex]

2. Oh! That explains it! I thought only a super group of powerful stupid

people would keep pushing a story that ultimately leads back to a REAL scandal involving Issa. Looks like I was right, incredibly stupid group of evil shit eaters. We have some bottom of the barrel feeders trying to write the M$M narrative.

[UTUSN]

4. What a bunch of scurvvy, creepy jerks are Rethugs! Not that they are "smart".

They are always scoundrels and greedy jerks, and their LIMITED mind/vision is shown in their fruit, the political philosophy they espouse, which is PINCHED, small-minded, and selfish. But this particular crew are STOOPID: Clarence THOMAS’s wife is who drunkenly called Anita HILL and drunkenly (I repeat) left a message (20 yrs later) demanding she apologize to Uncle Clarence.

ISSA is a criminal delinquent. He spent a mill-yon bucks fueling the Recall in California, thinking he would be the one to run for governor, only to be sideswiped by Ahhhhhnuld. (And the radio wingnut patronized me, telling me I should be FOR the Recall in California because Recalling was a Progressive innovation from the 1920s. Beats me why he thinks he’s particularly smart, since Recalling is not a graven image, but HOW it is used and BY WHOM that matters. Besides that I KNEW the history.)

“Other Groundswell members include John Bolton, the former UN ambassador; Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy; Ken Blackwell and Jerry Boykin of the Family Research Council; Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch; Gayle Trotter, a fellow at the Independent Women's Forum; Catherine Engelbrecht and Anita MonCrief of True the Vote; Allen West, the former GOP House member; Sue Myrick, also a former House GOPer; Diana Banister of the influential Shirley and Banister PR firm; and Max Pappas, a top aide to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).” Plus “reporters” from Breitbart and the Washington Examiner.

These are not your top o’the line brainiacs, but I’ll never MISUNDERESTIMATEt Rethugs, since if Shrub can steal it so can any of them.

[GeorgeGist]

6. Reagan was amazing ...

in giving the stupids a voice.

[Scurrilous]

5. K & R

[Berlum]

7. Republican sleaze is beyond redemption

Republicans have no integrity or honor whatsoever. Gawd help us all.

[kentuck]

8. Conspirators

all !

[SleeplessinSoCal]

10. Why does Mrs Clarence Thomas get to lobby to prosecute the president? How is this legal?

[asjr]

13. I get the idea Mrs Thomas wears the pants in the family.

Clarence should be forced to step down from SCOTUS.

[longship]

12. You all are missing the target.

The only reason why the Republican Party is so uncompromising is because they are authoritarians, based on a theocratic politics. Those of us who have been involved in Democratic Party politics for decades have seen what has happened to the GOP.

When you think that your political opinions come from God, this is what happens. The Republicans have taken over their party structure with religious lunatics, and what we have now is the result.

The only response us liberals can do is to exercise what Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson did in the late 70's and early 80's. That is to take over a party from the bottom up. Liberals have to run for Precinct Delegate and take over our party one precinct at a time. It took Jerry Falwell and his ilk a couple of decades to do this. We need to realize that it may likely take as long to turn politics to liberal thinking.

You say that you do not like President Obama? Okay fine! Then what the fuck are you going to do about it? Carp about it on DU?

Sorry! No good. That isn't enough. Those of us who have been in the trenches know what the Republicans are about. It certainly has nothing about who is, or may be, running for President in 2016!

In the meantime the state legislatures and the governorships are increasingly in the hands of lunatics.

But, forget all that. Maybe we can convince Elizabeth Warren to run for President!!!!

This is called missing the target.

Naïveté.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

15. Overreach and Buyer's Remorse.

"In the meantime the state legislatures and the governorships are increasingly in the hands of lunatics."

If we can get past the obstacles to voting, Republicans should be out on their collective asses.

[longship]

18. Well, that is something else we have to work on.

But that will take federal court judges. Of course that also means people to appoint them which in turn means more Democrats.

The entire system works from bottom up as the Republicans have known for some time. In spite of having the White House there is not much a Democratic president can do when the deck is stacked against him (or her) at the legislative and state levels.

When that president desires to "change Washington" by making it a place for comity, and the opposing party wants nothing to do with that, what results is what we have. Instead of comity we have comedy. And very little getting done.

If only Barack Obama was more like LBJ. But then he wouldn't be Barack Obama.

I fear that the effect is that he comes off as a weak president.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

21. Agreed. AND the GOP counts on apathy and frustration turning off voters

For some reason Republican voters gain strength from sucking the blood of the poor. Vampires?

[freshwest]

19. +1

[longship]

20. Thank you. nt

[Number23]

22. Nicely said. And it's very telling that this post has only 55 recs while the most brain hurtingly

stupid posts accusing DUers of being "propagandists," "paid shills," and calling Dems "weak, corrupt (insert insult here)" get four times the number of recs. Even Skinner is sick of the moronic "persona" and "you're paid" garbage http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1259&pid=2715

And you would think that if ANYONE wanted to pat themselves on the back and pretend that DU was so fucking important that people were being paid to post here, it would be the MAN WHO STARTED DU IN THE FIRST PLACE.

But no, they're just holding "Dems to the fire" because they love them!1 Yeah, that's why people ignore what the Repubs are doing and say the most disgusting things about this administration. Yeah, that's all it is!1one

[Cha]

14. Ah ha! It says "it does not say how the recording was

obtained".. that was my burning question.

We finally got to meet Scott Prouty who gave us the mr 47% tape.. so I was wondering who this benefactor was?

thanks blm.. fascinating to read everything documented that was so obvious about the rw, anyway.

[lolly]

16. These tactics aren't new, though

There was a similar cabal (yes, the VRWC, and it was real) that worked feverishly for years to gin up scandals against the Clintons.

The press seems to be a little savvier now. With Clinton they ran with every crackpot overspun piece of nonsense that was fed to them.