A Footnote On Conservative Tragic Heroes Tony Rudy and Brian Darling

[JABBS]

The Alexander Strategy Group, a firm with “links to no fewer than three of the scandals” hitting Washington, will shut its doors at month’s end.

The lobbying firm had thrived since its founding in 1998 thanks largely to its close connections to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX). Edwin A. Buckham, the former top DeLay aide who owns the company, confirmed the firm's future with the Washington Post.

Buckham's firm employed DeLay's wife, Christine, for four years. It also benefited by working closely with Abramoff. Abramoff's plea agreement mentioned his close ties to Tony Rudy, one of Buckham's colleagues at ASG, identified in the court papers as "Staffer A."

Rudy, a former DeLay aide, worked for Abramoff before joining ASG. According to the plea document, a political consulting firm run by Rudy's wife allegedly received $50,000 in exchange for official actions Rudy took while working for DeLay.

A senior ASG employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, estimated that up to 50 percent of the firm's clients probably would have abandoned the firm soon because of adverse publicity about the continuing investigations involving Rudy and Buckham.

The 12 lobbyists who now work at ASG -- other than Rudy and Buckham -- apparently intend to start a successor firm, to serve former ASG clients.

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A little side note: I know Tony Rudy. He -- along with Brian Darling, an aide to Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL), who was outed as the author of the memo suggesting that Republicans use the Terri Schiavo tragedy for political gain -- were one-half of a quartet that led the conservatives in the University of Massachusetts student government in the late 1980s.

Things might have been more innocent in those days. I remember arguing with Tony, Brian and their colleagues about all things Reagan. But basically, I remember them as being fun, smart guys who happily wasted time in the campus center arcade, and weren't against getting a beer.

Even then, we were rivals. In addition to their work in student government, Tony and Brian helped launch a conservative rag, The Minuteman, which had a not-always-friendly rivalry with the newspaper I helped edit, The Daily Collegian.

Now, some 17 years later, Tony Rudy and Brian Darling have become tragic heroes for the conservative noise machine. And I continue to fight it.

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This item first appeared at Journalists Against Bush's B.S.

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1. Shutter one sleaze shop, open another

They'll be back. They'll always be back, like fleas or cockroaches or dandruff. The Alexander Strategy Group will shut its doors, and a week after that, the Charlemagne Strategy Group will open for business. Same old corrupt management, same old corrupt ways.

"Fun, smart guys" who have found that subverting the system, shitting on the poor and the powerless pays very well so they can devote more of their time to arcade games and beer. And then work to enact policies that poison the air and the water, or keep millions in poverty, or send thousands off to war, and they "earn" another six-figure paycheck.

[JABBS]

2. fun, smart guys

They figured out a way to make the system work for them, just like they did in college.

Perhaps fun, smart, devious guys is a more accurate description?

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3. I partially disagree

They're not figuring out a way to make the system work for them. They're finding a place in the penumbra, in the shadows, to subvert the system, bleed off enough to line their own pockets, and escape accountability for their actions all the while denouncing their victims. It's a sweet deal for someone without a conscience or a moral compass; my major objection is that these sleazeballs like to portray themselves as the ethical folks, defenders of freedom and liberty. And they manage to fool enough people and find enough willing accomplices to stay out of trouble -- mostly.

[JABBS]

4. well, all I can attest to

is what I knew of them when we were all 21 or so (they were a year ahead of me at UMass).

I will say that at UMass, in the 1988-89 school year, Darling, Rudy and two colleagues were able to prevent two liberal students from becoming co-presidents of student government. The official reason was because it was unclear -- they said -- whether it was legal to have co-presidents. The real reason was because one of the co-presidents, Jason Rabinowitz, ran the Communist Students group.

Darling, Rudy et al were able to filibuster the issue the entire school year, and essentially shut down a good portion of student government. Sort of laid the groundwork for their more recent work.

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5. Yeah.

I knew Floyd Brown briefly in college back in the late 1970s. He was one of the folks behind the fabled Willie Horton commercial that caused so much trouble for Michael Dukakis. He also had a little radio program for a while, where he was a junior Rash Lardbutt. He then went on to bigger and better things in the 1990s as the Lazy Journalist's Friend during the Clinton years, supplying a steady stream of fatuous and false information easily digestible for lazy journalists, and packaged in the most misleading fashion to make the Clintons look like crooks. It was hard for me to believe it was the same guy I knew from my long ago undergrad days, but many of the earmarks of what he became were there for the careful observer.

Shoulda kicked him in the nads when I had the chance and before I became an adherent of non-violence.