A Circular Firing Squad Is The GOP’s Only Chance For Victory in This Fall’s Presidential Election

McCamy Taylor

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Sun Jan-27-08 02:03 AM
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A Circular Firing Squad Is The GOP’s Only Chance For Victory in This Fall’s Presidential Election

This is the second in my two part journal about Pat Buchanan and the IVth journal about the Circular Firing Squad that some would like the Democratic Party to form (but which we must resist).

I have good reason to suspect that Pat Buchanan is behind all the infighting within the Democratic Party. In 1972, Buchanan came up with a very similar plan to attack Nixon’s Democratic opponents and help him win re-election.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/stories/buchananmemo.htm

Republican presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan strongly favored a plan of "covert operations" to harass and embarrass Democratic contenders in the heady days at the Nixon White House before the Watergate scandal.
Then a White House speechwriter and enthusiastic member of the Nixon campaign's "attack group," Buchanan laid out his ideas in an April 10, 1972, memo looking ahead to that summer's Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach. It was addressed to Attorney General John N. Mitchell and White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman.
On the memo's last page -- one never turned over to Watergate congressional investigators – Buchanan and his top aide recommended staging counterfeit attacks by one Democrat on another, fouling up scheduled events, arranging demonstrations and spreading rumors to plague the rival party, all the while being careful not to run afoul of the Secret Service.

And get this

Buchanan denied in testimony before the Senate Watergate committee in 1973 that he was aware of any "covert operations" that the GOP had sponsored for the Democratic convention.

Hmmm. That makes Buchanan a liar, like most of the people in the corporate media. It also makes him the kind of guy who spreads smears about one Democratic candidate and then attributes them to another Democratic candidate in order to create infighting within the opposition party. There is a name for this strategy. It is called Divide and Conquer.We are seeing it right now.

"We should guard here against a) anything which enables the Democrats to blame us for the mess which takes place in Miami Beach; b) anything which can be traced back to us and c) anything which is so horrendous as to damage us, if the hand is discovered."

Read how Buchanan is accused of masterminding the “dirty tricks” that lead Muskie to drop from the race, clearing the way for McGovern, the man Nixon wanted to run against.

http://www.realchange.org/buchanan.htm

According to Anthony Lukas' book "Nightmare", Buchanan took part in Nixon's "Dirty Tricks" another way -- editing a phony pamphlet pretending to be from a liberal Democrats group that attacked Muskie. (His assistant Ken Khachigian wrote it.) Many investigators also think Buchanan or Khachigian wrote the infamous "Canuck letter", a forged letter claiming Muskie has slandered French Canadians as "Cannocks" (sic). The Canuck letter was one of two slams against Muskie that caused the Democratic front runner to break down crying in frustration at a New Hampshire news conference, crippling his candidacy.

The same article describes the way that other mainstream media types adore Buchanan, despite his anti-semitic, holocaust denying, right wing extremist views.

Pat Buchanan has moved between the media and the federal government since 1962, and has many friends in the press. They uniformly regard him as a friendly, charming guy, and their affection spills over into their news reports. The night of the New Hampshire primary this year, reporters at liberal NPR radio were laughing as they described Pat's more extreme stump rhetoric -- their attitude was clearly that of someone telling a story about their wild buddy and the outrageous things he said the other night when they were out drinking. In other words, they don't take him seriously, or at face value -- it's all part of the game, and Pat is just a skilled player.

OK, now keeping in mind Buchanan’s political beliefs (right of right) and his morals (nonexistent) and his effect on other journalists (hypnotic), I think I am not being overly anxious when I worry about the effect that he may be having on people like Chris Matthews, Lawrence O’Donnell, Tim Russert and the rest. Especially after what I witnessed tonight on MSNBC’s post South Carolina coverage.

For those who have not read it, here is the gospel according to Buchanan, or how the She Demon With Super Powers Hillary and her consort Bill have viciously attacked Obama.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/01/ghettoizing_barack.html

In my previous journal about Pat Buchanan I go into why I think that Buchanan’s argument is flawed.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4201389

However, all the writers agree that Buchanan is very charming, very persuasive. And the MSM just hates Bill Clinton with a passion because he is always telling them off. So, if good old Pat tells them that Hillary the Bitch is using racist tactics and that Obama is the victim of racist tactics, it probably sounds like good copy to them.
It is great strategy if you want to arrange the Democrats into a circular firing squad. Didn’t Obama say recently that his supporters were so mad that he could no longer promise that his voters would support the Democratic nominee if that nominee was not him? Shades of Chicago 1968 and Eugene McCarthy! Shades of a Republican upset victory!

If you read my journal, you know that I have been saying for months that the only hope that the Republicans have for winning next years presidential election is to arrange the Democrats in a circular firing squad just like the one back in 1968. In reverse chronological order, here are my “Circular Firing Squad” posts:

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/122

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/120

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/95

Note that the last is the first which I wrote last November, when people at DU were analyzing the different Democratic candidates, trying to nuance which was a fraction of a degree more anti-war than the other anti-war Democrats. At that time, I posted

Today’s Democrats need to keep 1968 in mind as we head towards the primaries and the nominating convention. As in 1968, a war is the number one issue. Once again, the outcome of this election will determine whether the war will end now or escalate, possibly spilling over into adjoining countries and dragging on for years. As in 1968, the election appears to be in the bag for the Democrats---but all that can change. There haven’t been any assassinations, nor are there likely to be. In this modern age of the corporate media, we see character assassination. Nixon started it in 1972 when he decided he wanted to run against McGovern instead of Muskie.

Now, the press does the dirty tricks, giving certain candidates no publicity or bad publicity while others are given lots of good publicity, based upon whether or not Rudy or whoever the anointed one happens to be wants to run against that candidate. Or, based upon what kind of triangulation they are trying to set up for the Democratic Convention. Divide the Democratic vote between candidates whose supporters have vowed that they will never vote for each other’s candidate, send them to the convention, plant some moles to denounce so and so as “the same as George Bush” and so and so as “anti gay” and you can get a nice little war going.

This is Divide and Conquer at its finest, and Divide and Conquer is the Republican National Committee’s favorite strategy when it comes to dealing with the Democratic Party. It is so easy to do, since we are the party of diversity. Usually we respect each other’s differences. But send a provocateur in to pretend to be a bigot, and watch the sparks fly.

The Republicans are hoping to see the Democrats leave the convention with a nominee and a fractured party. The losers (they hope) will have either failed to endorse the winner or have grudgingly endorsed him/her. The losers’ supporters will be vocal in their disdain for the winner. This kind of scenario is most likely after a bitter primary battle in which a lot of name calling has gone on. In a perfect world (for the GOP), Democrats will be proclaiming their own nominee “no better than Bush” and a “warmonger”---the way that Democrats in 1968 called Humphrey a pro war candidate. Even if they are not talking about it after August, the Republicans can go back in time and pull up footage of the Democratic challengers and their supporters saying it during the primary battle. With the Democrat labeled for all the world as a hawk who will perpetuate the war just like the Republican (who is going to put forward a “secret plan to end the war” you can count on that) suddenly the War in Iraq is going to become muddled in people’s minds.

To my relief, the Democratic candidates took care of the war issue by all agreeing that the war would end immediately when they took office. Great! Unity.

Ha! As if the dirty tricksters of the right wing would ever let that happen. Karl Rove and George Bush want a Republican to succeed them so that there will be no prosecution of their crimes. The MSM wants a Republican FCC to continue unlimited media expansions and mergers. Pat Buchanan would rather die than see a Democratic Congress and President change this country any more than it has changed already from the fairy tale segregated paradise of his youth.

People, we are being played. Played by Pat Buchanan. Played by the RNC. Played by the MSM. The Democratic candidates---Obama and Hillary—are playing into their hands with their negative campaigning. But no one has done anything as bad as the MSM has labeled it. The guys did not beat up on the gal in New Hampshire. The Clintons are not “ghettoizing” Obama.
Pat Buchanan, Karl Rove and a bunch of people who think like they do just want it to look that way, so that we will be a fractured Democratic Party like we were in 1968. Because in a democracy, when as many people are as mad as we are and as ready for change, the only way that you can stop them is by Diving them and Conquering them.

No Democrat is the Enemy. Do no even think about sitting out this fall’s general election, no matter whom the nominee is. We went through that before in 1968. It killed a lot of US soldiers and got us the Killing Fields in Cambodia.

Solidarity! It isn't just a slogan. It is a matter of life or death to millions of Americans who have no insurance, no way to get home from Iraq, no roof over their head, no job, no education.