Reply #64: fess up? Please.

[cali]

when did you stop beating your wife? That stuff is beneath you- at least I think it is. Like many other people here who don't support Clinton, I feel obliged to defend her from the attacks that are not legitimate- i.e. personal attacks about her marriage, comparisons to Hitler, bush and cheney, etc. I also criticize her on policy and other things. All you have to do is search to confirm that.

Lee Atwood was one of the majors architects for the republican strategy of smear and steal. He was in the Reagan and Bush Sr. WH. He was one of the most important- and morally repugnant political strategists is the history of the country. Everything the repubs do is built on Atwater's strategy. He was also Rove's mentor:

Here's a bit from wiki- and exerpt from an interview with Atwater in the 80s:

"Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.
And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me - because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger'."

Here another bit:

"Harvey Leroy "Lee" Atwater (February 26, 1951 – March 29, 1991) was an American Republican political consultant and strategist. He was born in Atlanta, Georgia and graduated from Newberry College, a small private Lutheran institution in Newberry, South Carolina.

Atwater was a trusted advisor of U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. He was also a political mentor and close friend of Karl Rove. Atwater invented many of the techniques of modern electoral politics, including promulgating reputation-destroying rumors. His opponents have characterized him as the "happy hatchet man"<1> and "the Darth Vader of the Republican party".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater

Understanding who Atwater was, gives one a much better idea of what the repuke party IS.