Howard Dean was correct when he said today that the GOP is using “hate and divisiveness” to win elections. The want us to hate Clinton and they want us to fear Obama. The Republican Party propaganda machine has pursued this strategy with the single minded determination of a bloodhound on the trail of a fugitive since early 2007, often through the ruse of using a known right wing media outlet to air false accusations against Sen. Obama with the coda
Sen. Hillary Clinton made us do it. It all started when
Insight a Rev. Sun Yung Moon owned publication published a phony story about Obama being educated in an Indonesian madrassa. Pure fiction The hook? They claimed that they got the story from the Clinton camp which had investigated Obama’s past and uncovered the evidence. CNN quickly laid the claim to rest, but not before numerous corporate media outlets gave this piece of tabloid trash way too much coverage on the grounds that
Hey, we know that the part about Obama is not true, but that Hillary is such a bitch…..
I have long believed that this was but the first of a string of CREEPY style dirty tricks played by the RNC under Karl Rove’s direction. I recently found this article written by Joe Conason of Salon from Jan 26, 2007. He called it a Nixonian dirty trick while it was happening. Big gold star to Conason for being perhaps the first columnist to notice what the RNC was up to this election and call them out.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2007/01/26/obama/ Ghosts of dirty tricks past
The right-wing smear campaign against Barack Obama, with its telltale twist of linking Hillary Clinton to the attack, is classic Watergate.
By Joe Conason
Jan. 26, 2007 | As the 2008 presidential campaign began last week, there was something inauspicious and even spooky in the political atmosphere, with strange echoes of ugly deeds committed more than 35 years ago.
On Tuesday, Watergate felon E. Howard Hunt passed on into history at the age of 88. But even while he lay dying in Miami, not far from the late President Nixon's Florida retreat, Hunt's spiritual heirs were orchestrating a classic Watergate-style dirty trick against both Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Not coincidentally, the perpetrators included certain veterans of the old Nixon gang, whose baneful influence on American politics has only grown over the decades.
Snip
Performing a dirty trick on one Democratic presidential candidate in a way that would reflect blame on another Democrat was the specialty of the Watergate crew led by Hunt, which back in the early '70s included G. Gordon Liddy and Donald Segretti, as well as a host of lesser goons and spies such as the ingénue Lucianne Goldberg.
According to "Nightmare: Underside of Nixon Years," the definitive book on the Watergate scandal, by the late, great journalist J. Anthony Lukas, Goldberg filed gossipy espionage reports from George McGovern's press plane on "who was sleeping with whom, what the Secret Service men were doing with the stewardesses, who was smoking pot on the plane -- that sort of thing." Or so she told him.
Meanwhile, Segretti and company had been putting out nasty smear stories about certain Democratic candidates and attributing the smears to other Democrats, in order to divide the opposition and destroy Nixon's potential competitors.
It is a great article. Be sure to read it.
This article showed me that other people were aware of what I had seen. The Pat Buchanan playbook had been dusted off. The new strategy was to paint Hillary a bitch and Obama as scary, and the RNC was going to do it in the simplest, most divisive way possible---by having their whores in the right wing media air lies about Obama and say that they got them from Clinton.
Before I go on, I would like to ask supporters of both candidates to reflect for just a moment. What is the biggest character issue that your candidate faces? For Clinton it is the problem that people see her as unlikable and untrustworthy. They think that she will do or say anything to win. She is a
bitch though other Democrats will not say the word aloud. This problem has gotten so bad that even her Democratic opponent has begun to exploit the issue since it is her biggest vulnerability and all is fair in love and politics.
For Obama it is issues of patriotism. Scariness. He keeps getting questioned about flag lapel pins and about ties to Muslims and Black Muslims and “God damn America” and whether he supports Hamas and what exactly is his relationship to Wright. It has gotten so bad that even his Democratic opponent has begun to exploit the issue since it is his biggest vulnerability and all is fair in love and politics.
Now, look at that Moonie story again. The Democrats are exactly where Rev. Moon wanted them to be sixteen months ago.
It took more than that one story. Rather than linking all the press articles, I will link my journals where I describe the media atrocities as I summarize them. Here is my first journal about
The Press vs. Hillary Clinton http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/157Winter 2006-7 Washington Post culls a story about Obama’s youthful drug use from his autobiography. Fox News declares, without proof that Clinton is the source. Various RWers like Bay Buchanan, Mike Murphy make jokes about how she will do anything to win ( Obama needs a food taster etc.)
I go into much more detail about these two prong attacks in my first journal about
The Press vs. Barack Obama http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/162I have links here to the Moonie madrassa story from
January 2007 including Media Matters coverage of the faux scandal and the phony resolution (the Washington Post revives the story a year later)
Then, in
November 2007 as the candidates were campaigning in Iowa, Bob Novak wrote and claimed on the air that he knew that Clinton had dirt on Obama that she did not intend to use. For some reason, Obama did not call out Novak for this obvious GOP dirty trick but instead called Clinton a dirty trickster—something that Iowans can not tolerate and which may have cost her votes in Iowa. This almost certainly lead the Clinton camp to speculate that Obama was either politically naïve for not recognizing an obvious RNC dirty trick or else very calculating. It had the desired effect (from the RNC’s point of view) of causing division between the two campaigns. Novak threw even more oil on the fire .
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312153,00.html On Monday, Novak told FOX News that claims that there is actual dirt on Obama might not pass the sniff test.
WTF? He is the one who made the claims. Why say it if there was no story?
"This is very similar to the kind of trick that Richard Nixon used to pull, where he would say, 'I know some very bad information about the communists supporting George McGovern, but I can't put that out because it wouldn't be right, but I'm just too good of a guy,' " Novak said.
Novak suggests first that Clinton might have spread disinformation about having dirt when she did not have dirt in order to freak out Obama in order to trick him into making a political mistake, but then he changes tactics completely and says this:
Novak also suggested that Obama could use the information to his advantage, especially in the heated primary battle in Iowa, where Obama and Clinton were statistically tied in polls last week.
"Senator Obama's only hope is to portray Sen. Clinton as a manipulative, almost Nixonian-type of candidate who would do anything to win and can't be trusted. Obviously, Senator Obama is in a different position — he must win in Iowa," Novak said, but, "Iowa caucus-goers might be put off by any kind of allegation of dirty tricks on the part of the Clinton campaign."
You got that? Novak just called
both Democrats dirty tricksters. He managed to persuade Obama to call Clinton a dirty trickster in public before the Iowa primaries. And all he had to do was tell a single lie that no one could ever disprove. For the record, Novak worked for Nixon in 1972. His “abortion, acid and amnesty” smear against McGovern was very effective.
Dec. 2007 The Washington Post, which had already introduced the subject of Obama’s youthful drug use one year before by getting the information from his autobiography and writing a feature story about it in their newspaper was able to introduce the story
again when the husband of Jeanne Shaheen who was working with the Clinton camp in New Hampshire raised the question of whether or not it would hurt Obama in the general election. Note that as the husband of a politician, Shaheen would be the least likely person to take orders from Hillary Clinton. If he did anything deliberately, it would be to aid his wife’s career. Also note that if someone in one camp farts while talking about someone in another camp, the press will report it, they are so desperate for anything that they can report as an attack that will make this campaign more divisive.
(BTW, I have never understood why the “monster” comment had to be reported. I will bet that plenty of politicians have called each other assholes and not been quoted. But if someone calls Clinton a “monster” there is some kind of journalistic ethic which says it must get broadcast from the rooftops? How about I call the Pope a Nazi? Does the press need to publish that?)
Now, the Washington Post was all outrage that the story was mentioned. And Chris Matthews, who invited Penn, Axelrod and Trippi onto his show to discuss Obama and drugs for a solid hour and who kept asking “Do things really go better with coke?” pretended to be outraged when, in response to repeated questions, Penn used the word “cocaine” instead of “drugs” midway through the show. (Was the audience supposed to imagine that Obama was smoking crack? Or shooting up?) This started a whole new round of Obama and Clinton bashing, as Tweety and the guys at MSNBC began to lie that Mark Penn came on Hardball and out of nowhere introduced the subject of Obama using drugs, during a discussion of UNICEF or something like that. Since Penn clearly spoke for Clinton, the press now had an excuse to talk nonstop about the non issue of Obama and drugs and Clinton being a bitch. For whatever reason, the Obama camp decided to remind voters of this issue in January with the “Race Memo” which included the Mark Penn lie, giving the press yet another excuse to harp on the subject of Obama and drugs. I guess that
Hillary is a bitch was just too tempting to let lie. Links to the Media Matters rebuttal of the Mark Penn lie are included in my journal link above.
Shaheen really did mention the topic, but that was small beans---an independent player talking to the press--- compared to the Mark Penn story which was a complete fabrication by Chris Matthews. Once again the news media had punked both Obama and Clinton. MSNBC is owned by GE. At the time this was happening, they were calling McCain “maverick” and “straight shooter” and telling Republicans why they had to get behind him to avoid a brokered Republican Convention.
Spring 2008 The attacks from the right suddenly began to come fast and furious.
Drudge put Obama in a dress---and claimed that Clinton made them do it. The Clinton camp said that they did not authorize anyone to send that photo to Drudge and while they were still grilling employees to see if any of them were guilty, the Obama camp denounced the Clinton camp---based upon the word of Drudge. The Clinton camp was then outraged at the Obama camp. Understandable, really, if you go back and read Joe Conason’s article. A CREEPY dirty trick is soooo easy to spot.
Drudge doctored Clinton’s
60 Minutes interview. When asked if Obama is a Muslim, she answers immediately and emphatically “No, of course not!” When pressured for proof, she responds a second time “No… as far as I know.” Because she is not his mother. Why doesn’t 60 Minutes go ask Obama? When she is asked a third time, she calls the rumors a right wing smear. Drudge doctors the interview to give the impression to its right wing readers that Obama is a Muslim…and that Hillary is a bitch. Once again, the Obama camp is outraged---at Clinton. The Clinton camp is then outraged at the Obama camp. No one can be this naïve. They must be doing it on purpose.
Fox airs quotes from Rev. Wright taken out of context. This is the first major right wing attack job that has not pretended to involve Clinton. Perhaps they were going to save it for the general election, until Wright decided to retire. Controversial remarks by a former pastor would have meant squat. These fit right in to the
Obama is scary and un-American narrative that the RNC has been developing. Since there is video involved, and since it feeds an ongoing narrative
Obama is un-American the press can keep airing this forever.
Obama needs a distraction. His speech alone will not do it. So, when Sinbad, an Obama supporter, mentions that he does not remember any sniper fire in Bosnia and CBS (which stabbed Dan Rather in the back and axed Ed Bradley's story about Lies About WMDs because its problems with owning too many TV stations makes it Karl Rove's bitch) comes up with footage, they have their distraction. They promote this aggressively. Since it feeds an ongoing narrative
Hillary is a lying bitch who will do anything to get elected and since it has video, they can keep this going for at least a couple of weeks. Long enough for Wright to die down….
And at this point, the two camps are so thoroughly brainwashed that they no longer have to be provoked by agents of the right wing. As soon as a news organization launches a smear against one of them based upon either “Hillary is a bitch” or “Barack is scary” the other can be counted upon to hop right in to join the fray, because by now the supporters of the two candidates fully believe the smears. Obama supporters just know that Clinton is the reason for any bad press that their guys gets even though this journal say otherwise
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/163 The Right Wing Media v. Obama: Death of 1000 Cuts or Softening Him Up for the General ElectionAnd Clinton supporters just know that they have been robbed by a
scary alliance of Karl Rove, the MSM and Barack Obama which has unfairly painted her as a bitch, witch, laser mean wielding monster----though such a team makes no sense. Out of my four part journal on
The Press vs. Hillary Clinton only one volume was needed to cover “friendly fire” or attacks by the liberal or Democratic press. Everything else came from the right wing or corporate media, and the bulk of the left wing attacks started in January and February 2008, after both the Obama and Clinton campaigns had been completely overcome by insanity.
Those who listened to Rev. Wright’s speeches to the NAACP and the National Press Club as opposed to critiquing them heard him talk about reconciliation. We can only unite the country if we first heal the divide within our party. The rift is artificial. There is no real difference between women and Blacks, poor and the disabled, immigrants and Muslims. We get divided by labels that get stuck on us so that a few people who own all the marbles can rob us of our single greatest resource, our solidarity.
The next time Matt Drudge or Rev Moon or Bob Novak says “Look into my eyes. I have something to show you…” tell him
“My eyes are clear and my mind is unclouded. I can see through your lies. Go fuck yourself.”
Eventually, the right wing will get the message that we can not be moved by their silly distractions.
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