"Just consider what you're doing now. You don't want to have the freakin' president of the United States mad at you for the rest of your life...If you step off this cliff, gravity never goes up, it goes down."
The Sopranos? No, Larry Telford, "incumbent retention director" of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC)
to a political neophyte running in the Texas Republican primary for the US House of Representatives. New York Congressman Tom Reynolds, chairman of the NRCC also called Mike Murphy, who has no prior political experience and has raised virtually no cash.
Reynolds dropped plenty of big names, including Karl Rove, chief political strategist for the president. Reynolds promised that, should Murphy put his party first, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay would be made aware and that he "wouldn't forget it."
The NRCC's communication director "denied that the party tried to squash District 4's grassroots challenger with bluster....[and] said that Karl Rove's name had not been dropped in either conversation. He also denied that either caller had in any way suggested that running might ruin Murphy's political career and make him an enemy of the White House."
However, Reynolds and Telford made the mistake of having these conversations with Murphy while he was taping the phone calls.
(Edited slightly by me after promotion from the diaries -- kos)