Unfortunately it falls flat.

“WASHINGTON — House Democrats were preparing late last year for the first floor vote on the financial regulatory overhaul when Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio and other Republican leaders summoned more than 100 industry lobbyists and conservative political activists to Capitol Hill for a private strategy session.

The bill’s passage in the House already seemed inevitable. But Mr. Boehner and his deputies told the Wall Street lobbyists and trade association leaders that by teaming up, they could still perhaps block its final passage or at least water it down.

“We need you to get out there and speak up against this,” Mr. Boehner said that December afternoon, according to three people familiar with his remarks, while also warning against cutting side deals with Democrats.

That sort of alliance — they won a few skirmishes, though they lost the war on the regulatory bill — is business as usual for Mr. Boehner, the House minority leader and would-be speaker if Republicans win the House in November. He maintains especially tight ties with a circle of lobbyists and former aides representing some of the nation’s biggest businesses, including Goldman Sachs, Google, Citigroup, R. J. Reynolds, MillerCoors and UPS.

They have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaigns, provided him with rides on their corporate jets, socialized with him at luxury golf resorts and waterfront bashes and are now leading fund-raising efforts for his Boehner for Speaker campaign, which is soliciting checks of up to $37,800 each, the maximum allowed.

Some of the lobbyists readily acknowledge routinely seeking his office’s help — calling the congressman and his aides as often as several times a week — to advance their agenda in Washington. And in many cases, Mr. Boehner has helped them out.

As Democrats increasingly try to cast the Ohio congressman as the face of the Republican Party — President Obama mentioned his name eight times in a speech last week — and as Mr. Boehner becomes more visible, his ties to lobbyists, cultivated since he arrived here in 1991, are coming under attack.

The woman he hopes to replace, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, derided him on Friday as having met “countless times with special-interest lobbyists in an effort to stop tough legislation” that would regulate corporations and protect consumers. And the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, through a spokeswoman, charged that he “epitomizes the smoked-filled, backroom, special-interest deal making that turns off voters about Washington.”

Mr. Boehner, who declined to be interviewed for this article, and his lobbyist allies ridicule such criticism as politically motivated by desperate Democrats. His actions, they say, simply reflect the pro-business, antiregulatory philosophy that he has espoused for more than three decades, dating back to when Mr. Boehner, the son of a tavern owner, ran a small plastics company in Ohio. And fielding requests from lobbyists is nothing unusual, he says.

“I get lobbied every day by somebody,” he said last month after a speech in Cleveland. “It could be by my wife. It could be the bellman. It goes on all day, every day, every place.”

And it’s all perfectly ethical and legal. There is nothing in the story that pertains to anything wrong, and yet Lipton gives it his best shot using the often tried and true “It’s the accusation of the appearance of evil that counts”.

Yet if this is the best he can do for his bosses to help them reverse fortunes in November, they’re screwed. If Lipton, who get’s front row seating to a lot of Democratic fundraising and other events, would disclosed his close involvement in the party happening, perhaps he would have more moral ground to stand on.

Unfortunately he doesn’t. Oh, and don’t worry, he’s not the only one who doesn’t disclose his involvement.

But that will come in another post. But I would love to see Pelosi go further attacking Boehner. In fact I would love to see any Democrat take this further. No party has more connections with special interests and lobbyist than the Demcorats. In fact during that vote on healthcare, the Democrats also had hundreds of special interest groups, specifically leftwing groups with big donation pockets lobbying Pelosi and Reid to get Obamacare passed.

In fact as The Examiner found, Obama’s promise to declare war on Lobbyist was just a bunch of talk – like a lot of what Obama says.

“in the previous 12 months, the Obama administration had hired at least 45 former lobbyists to policymaking jobs, including five Cabinet slots. A former lobbyist for the Swiss Bankers Association is the general counsel at the IRS, and a former Goldman lobbyist is chief of staff at the Treasury Department. Monsanto’s former chief lobbyist is the FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods. When Obama got rid of his ethics czar this summer, he transferred White House transparency duties to former lobbyist Bob Bauer.

This doesn’t count the “nonlobbyist lobbyists” like Liz Fowler, who was vice president of public policy at WellPoint, the nation’s largest insurer, but never registered as a lobbyist. After Obamacare passed, she joined the Department of Health and Human Services.

Google’s former vice president for government affairs, Andrew McLaughlin, is now the White House’s deputy chief technology officer. McLaughlin, using a personal e-mail account, cooperated with active Google lobbyists on “net neutrality” — a pro-regulation position favored by both Google and the president — in violation of White House policy. The White House “reprimanded” McLaughlin for that, but it excused his regular e-mail exchange with another Google lobbyist, Vint Cerf, because Cerf (who calls himself an “evangelist” of policy, and is not registered as a lobbyist) sits on a federal advisory board.

These nonlobbyist lobbyists — McLaughlin, Cerf, Fowler and Obama confidant Tom Daschle, for instance — have proliferated under Obama.

Boehner fires back through Byron York and shows that Lipton wasn’t interested in getting to the truth, only to get his screed to press.