"The consultants will drag you through the mud so Obama was brilliant in putting Valerie in that role, " Sanchez said.

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It seems that same union had secretly found a high-powered lawyer to drag Whitman through the mud and, of course, also backed her rival Jerry Brown.

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The area remained an unnavigable bog, forcing traders to drag their boats through the mud until 1848, when William Butler Ogden, the mightiest industrialist in the Midwest, backed the first canal that allowed boat traffic to sail straight through.

FORBES: A most unromantic river

The prosecutors - and those faceless bureaucrats pulling the strings - managed to drag not only Weissman's and Rosen's names through the mud for five years, they managed to cast a pall of criminality and treason on the whole pro-Israel community and the hawks in the Pentagon that tended to agree with it on matters of national security policy.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: A cautionary tale