Documentary Atwater "his corrosive vision has seeped into the nation's political groundwater."

[Cell Whitman]

New documentary looks at Lee Atwater.

It always amazes me when the pundits and the public complain about how our political discourse has turned to crap - like we don't know why. Sure, there has been negative politics since day one but we have watched negative politics become the norm over the last 30 years in particular. This happened as result of the Republicans realizing they would NEVER control the House/Senate again - or for sure all three branches of government as they did in 2001 - without tearing the whole country down. Today, McCain has made outright lying his primary campaign tactic.

To be fair, it wasn't just Atwater. The person considered the father of the individual attack ad was man less known, Terry Dolan. Dolan was a competitor of Karl Rove's within the cesspool known as the College Republicans. Dolan was funded by the man whose hand has been behind the rise of today's "new" right, Sun Myung Moon.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/25/AR2008092504489.html

'Boogie Man' Lee Atwater: Truly Scary

In the can't-look-away documentary "Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story," the career of the wildly successful, and wildly controversial, late Republican political operative comes back to us in ways that are funny, sad and mean. There is more than one moment in this film that will likely pop your jaw open.

Consider then-Secretary of State James A. Baker eulogizing Atwater at his 1991 funeral as "Machiavellian . . . in the very best sense of that term." (My dictionary defines the term as "characterized by unscrupulous cunning, deception, expediency or dishonesty.")<...>

He helped perfect the ugly art of "wedge issues" and "driving up the negatives" on opposition candidates. He helped perfect the ugly art of "wedge issues" and "driving up the negatives" on opposition candidates. Entertaining, guitar-playing, insecure and hardworking -- he delighted in achieving a victory through fair means or foul --<...>

Atwater's single most notorious bit of work came during the 1988 campaign, in the form of the Willie Horton ad used against Dukakis. <...> Atwater said he was going to make Horton Dukakis's "running mate."

The ad pretty much became the touchstone for demonizing black men in political campaigning. In archival footage, we see Atwater denying that he or the Bush campaign had anything to do with the ad, insisting he'd never even seen it.

Then Forbes cuts to one of Atwater's friends describing how, before the ad was ever aired, Atwater called him into his office, showed him the ad, said he was going to set it up as the work of an independent committee (and thus, with no fingerprints) and asked what he thought. <...>

Atwater died of a brain tumor at 40. Near death, he apologized to Dukakis and others for his tactics. Some people in the film believe he was sincere and some don't.

What is clear, from watching this talented man and his view of politics and America, is that his corrosive vision has seeped into the nation's political groundwater.

a little on Terry Dolan:

Charlotte Hayes, who wrote a hilarious and snarky memoir in The New Republic entitled "I was Moonie Gossip Columnist," still laments the loss of the generous expense account she had at the (Washington Times). "This is on the Rev.," Hayes, a thoroughbred conservative, would tell sources as she lunged for meal checks. "The Times," she added drolly, "is a place for free market conservatives to escape the free market." ...

Some insiders say that the Unification Church was the number one contributor to conservative causes throughout the 1980s. In 1984, the church gave $750,000 to the Conservative Alliance, a group spearheaded by the late Terry Dolan. It was a transaction riddled with irony: the Church fiercely condemns homosexuality and Dolan, a closeted gay man, was already sick with AIDS. Two years later the church bailed direct-mail king Richard Viguerie out of financial trouble with a whopping $10 million. Observers saw the transactions as a reward for a long friendship; Viguerie handled the Church's direct mail business since the late '60s. In 1988, the church made a $50,000 contribution to George Bush's re-election campaign.

(From “Moonstruck: The Reverend and his Newspaper” by Ann Louise Bardach, an article that was originally to have appeared in Vanity Fair in 1992 but was killed by the publication. The article finally saw print when included in the book Killed, Great Journalism Too Hot to Print by David Wallis, pages 137-165.)

[blm]

1. Open it all up...this nation was hijacked by the Bush-Moon alliance decades ago....

time to open the books on what has been driving this nation to the brink.

[Cell Whitman]

6. he was behind the unraveling of our nation

but no one talks about it.

The Bushes promote Moon in his role as THE Messiah and the press - not a peep. Moon, btw has moved onto the planet with his plan. He had a fork in our political system by 1994, imo.

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/5/6/6440/76200

It doesn't help that the guy who just put out a book on Moon acts like if it wasn't Moon some other right winger would have done what he did. That is crazy and wrong on many, many levels. Moon outspent anyone doing this - billions on the WT alone - and he knew exactly what was doing. He and his braintrust are many times smarter than any conservative they used to make this happen. Moon also has a much more defined agenda which required a hard right America with fertile political soil for the theocrats.

Quoting James Whelan, the first editor of Moon’s Washington Times. Whelan quit the paper saying he had "blood on his hands" for helping Moon gain credibility.

Whelan said this in 1991 - the deed has been done. It is all around us but the nation does not see.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9008719207533458404&hl=en

"They (the Moonies) are subverting our political system. They're doing it through front organizations--most of them disguised--and through their funding of independent organizations--through the placement of volunteers in the inner sanctums of hard-pressed organizations. In every instance--in every instance--those who attend their conferences, those who accept their money or their volunteers, delude themselves that there is no loss of virtue because the Moonies have not proselytized. That misses the central, crucial point: the Moonies are a political movement in religious clothing. Moon seeks power, not the salvation of souls. To achieve that, he needs religious fanatics as his palace guard and shock troops. But more importantly, he needs secular conscripts--seduced by money, free trips, free services, seemingly endless bounty and booty--in order to give him respectability and, with it, that image of influence which translates as power."

[seafan]

9. Time to point folks again to Robert Parry's extensive archive on the Moon-Bush history.

Dark Side of Rev. Moon


This is a putrid abscess that should be lanced and drained. And you are right, blm. It's time to throw open the secret books on the subversive and malignant Bush-Moon alliance.

[Cell Whitman]

10. .Moon has actually threatened to do that

He has been working a major effort to manipulate the United Nations - trying to get the UN to add a theocratic body to its structure. Anyway, he said if the US didn't pay its bills to the UN he'd throw open his books and show how much he has spent and to who...

He keeps all off guard, his operative actually wrote a memo years ago to the republicans who were helping Moon. He told them not to worry they would con a few dems into participating along the way and that would shut them up. It has worked beyond his dreams. Today frigging dems send him letters of support. Got that? The old devil spends billions promoting theocratic fascism in the nation, propping up every disgusting right wing subversive freak he can find and the dems send his fronts letters of support. Beyond being sadly sick, they get NOTHING in return but a nation in shambles.

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R

[On the Road]

3. I Don't Know How to Find It

but Spy Magazine had an amazing article in which two of their reporters ran into Atwater and went out drinking with him. The man was likeable in person but a completely amoral political animal. I tend to think his deathbed apology was sincere.

[Jackpine Radical]

4. Likable, totally amoral--in other words, a psychopath.

[On the Road]

5. Yeah, Something of That Nature

Many people who lie by habit are very likable and don't see a problem with it. It's a way of life in certain communities.

[blm]

8. BINGO, JackRad...

.

[Captain Hilts]

7. He was a shit that played the religious right like a violin...

yet was having nooners with the head of the Republican Party of Kentucky on his lunch hour.

A real shit as a person.

[blm]

11. He couldn't have done that without his coziness with the Bushes and the Tim LaHayes of this world.

He goes back at least to the 60s with the Bushes and to the 70s with Tim LaHaye.