Originally posted in GDP -
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2237064&mesg_id=2237064by email
EXTREME RIGHT WING ATTACKS BEGIN
The right wing attack machine that struck in 2004 is back. Just this week John O'Neill, the leader of the notorious Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, attacked Bernie in a sign of the coming barrage of negative attacks in the Vermont Senate race from the extreme right wing. In a fundraising e-mail sent out on behalf of Republican Greg Parke, O'Neill wrote he is working on "A mission to stop the most dangerous liberal in America from winning election to the U.S. Senate. It's a threat that rises to the same level of danger as the idea of John Kerry as President. This new threat I'm talking about is far left Congressman Bernie Sanders. Sanders is as radical as they come." He continues, "And with the unique rules of the Senate... ...where all it takes is one maverick Senator to really gum up the works, Sanders is about to turn into a dangerous liberal wrecking crew." To read an article about the attack:
http://bernie.org/?p=97 The truth is that the right wing and their corporate backers believe Bernie is dangerous because he has beat them in the past and will fight them in the Senate. During the campaign Bernie wants to talk about the issues that are important to Vermonters that the right wing doesn't want to discuss: tax breaks for the rich and cutbacks to Medicaid; giveaways to big oil at a time of record profits for oil companies that are charging all-time high prices for gas and home heating oil; the disappearance of the middle class and the growing gap between the rich and the poor; and the disintegration of our health care system. To learn more about the issues important to Bernie:
http://bernie.org/?page_id=77 Don't let the extreme right wing get away with it. Let's have a Senate race that will focus on the issues that are important to Vermonters instead of engaging in the gutter politics of the right wing. To learn more and support Bernie, please visit Bernie's website:
http://bernie.org Thanks.
Phil Fiermonte
Campaign Director
[email protected]The Nation: Swift Boat Attack on Bernie Sanders
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=34486 The latest polls from Vermont show that U.S. Representative Bernie Sanders, the only independent member of the House, has a dramatic lead in the race for that state's open U.S. Senate seat. In a race where the Democrats are expected to fall back and allow the Sanders a clean shot at the seat, a WCAX-TV/Research 2000 poll, released last week, found the congressman to be leading the likely Republican nominee, millionaire Rich Tarrant, by a margin of 64 percent to 16 percent of Vermonters who were surveyed. Those numbers will not come as much of a surprise to anyone who has spent time in Vermont, where Sanders' three decades of political independence and straight-talk about economic issues have earned him the admiration even of those who do not always agree with his progressive populism. But Sanders' strong position is a source of frustration for inside-the-Beltway Republican operatives and their network of henchmen.
Aside from impending indictments, few things frighten the political hacks who run the White House more than the thought of Sanders, who has served with great success as an independent member of the House since 1991, entering the Senate and developing an even greater national profile. Unlike the Democrats who have such a hard time appealing across lines of party and ideology on fundamental economic issues, Sanders is something of a genius when it comes to building broad coalitions – as illustrated by his big wins in Vermont regions that generally vote Republican. In the Senate, Sanders would give voice to a critique of Bush administration economic policies and the White House's assault on domestic civil liberties that would make would be far more likely to resonate with voters than the tepid Democratic message. And Karl Rove and his compatriots know that voice could turn the direction on debates on a host of major issues. It's for that reason that -- despite Sanders' immense popularity in Vermont -- the hacks in Washington have not given up on trying to figure out how to beat him in next year's Senate race.
Needless to say, they understand that it will take a lot of character assassination, innuendo and outright deception to defeat the man who is generally recognized as the most popular political figure in Vermont. So it comes as no surprise that, just days after the WCAX-TV/Research 2000 poll results showed just how daunting the task of taking on Sanders has become for the Beltway bandits, the big gun were called out.
John O'Neill, the man behind the "swiftboating" of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, is now going after Sanders. O'Neill, who started working with Republicans to attack political dissenters back in the Nixon years but who really came into his own with his role in promoting the wildly disingenuous and broadly disputed "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" attacks on Kerry's Vietnam service record during the 2004 campaign, has just penned an anti-Sanders letter that is being distributed on right-wing websites. O'Neill says he's enthusiastic about the campaign of little-known perennial candidate Greg Parke in the Republican Senate primary, but it's clear that he is getting involved in the race to attack Sanders rather than to promote Parke.
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