http://kerrylibrary.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=4&st=20#My God: given the scandal this week of Sidney Blumenthal sending right wing smear e-mails to press people of every sort, well, this just makes me sad:
The Republicans' Kerry problem
Three decades ago, a worried Nixon White House tried to destroy young John Kerry, a war hero who interfered with its plan to smear Democrats as un-American. Today's White House has the same problem.
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By Sidney Blumenthal
Feb. 12, 2004 | From the onset of the Cold War, the Republicans attempted to taint the Democrats as unpatriotic, in league with America's enemies without and within. With its end, one of the central organizing principles of the Republican political strategy dissolved. But in the aftermath of 9/11, George W. Bush and his political advisor Karl Rove reanimated the patriot game, and Democrats were conflated with terrorists and tyrants.
The founding father of the Republican patriot game was Richard Nixon, whose career was borne along by impugning the patriotism of Democratic opponents and uncovering subversives who he claimed represented the heart of the New Deal. His relentless ambition, however, was thwarted when he found himself confronted with a war hero, John F. Kennedy. In 1960, the game was over. But the Vietnam War gave Nixon the platform for his resurrection. Once he became president, the game of smearing the Democrats was reinvented as he set Vietnam veterans and hardhat blue-collar workers (veteran surrogates) against war protesters.
In the spring of 1971, a worrisome new political figure emerged to oppose his Vietnam policy. On April 22, John Kerry, wearing combat fatigues, his Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam?" Kerry asked. "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? This administration has done us the ultimate dishonor. They have attempted to disown us and the sacrifices we made for this country."
According to Nixon's secret White House tapes, there were a number of fretful meetings held on how to discredit Kerry. Nixon, the ultimate opportunist, wanted to characterize Kerry as one, too. "Well, he is sort of a phony, isn't he?" Nixon says. "A racket, sure." "He came back a hawk and became a dove when he saw the political opportunities," Charles Colson, his hatchet man, says. Nixon sneers, "Well, anyway, keep the faith." Colson sends Nixon a memo: "Destroy the young demagogue..." The day after Kerry's testimony, Nixon held another meeting. Chief of staff H.R. Haldeman says, "He did a superb job on it at Foreign Relations Committee yesterday. A Kennedy-type guy, he looks like a Kennedy, and he, he talks exactly like a Kennedy." That sort of comparison could only incite Nixon's dread and envy. Nixon disbelieves that Kerry won medals for bravery. "Bob, the Navy didn't have any casualties in Vietnam except in the air," he insists. Three days later, Haldeman returns. "We've got some interesting dope on Kerry. Kerry, it turns out, some time ago decided he wanted to get into politics." In another meeting, Haldeman and John Ehrlichman suggest to Nixon that if Kerry led protesters who cut their hair and wore ties and allied with "the hardhats," they would win a majority to their side. "That's right," says Nixon. But, he adds, "They're against all that."
Damn 2008 -- it keeps creeping into my 2005 nostalgia. I really thought the Bush years were as bad as it got -- but the idea that so many from our own side would betray fellow Democrats and the ideals they held dear. Well, that actually seems worse than the Bush years. Betrayal always stings more.
Edit: I needed to show the contrast between what Sidney wrote in '04, and what he has been doing this year:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/sidney-blumenthal-uses-fo_b_99695.html Almost every day over the past six months, I have been the recipient of an email that attacks Obama's character, political views, electability, and real or manufactured associations. The original source of many of these hit pieces are virulent and sometimes extreme right-wing websites, bloggers, and publications. But they aren't being emailed out from some fringe right-wing group that somehow managed to get my email address. Instead, it is Sidney Blumenthal who, on a regular basis, methodically dispatches these email mudballs to an influential list of opinion shapers -- including journalists, former Clinton administration officials, academics, policy entrepreneurs, and think tankers -- in what is an obvious attempt to create an echo chamber that reverberates among talk shows, columnists, and Democratic Party funders and activists. One of the recipients of the Blumenthal email blast, himself a Clinton supporter, forwards the material to me and perhaps to others.
These attacks sent out by Blumenthal, long known for his fierce and combative loyalty to the Clintons, draw on a wide variety of sources to spread his Obama-bashing. Some of the pieces are culled from the mainstream media and include some reasoned swipes at Obama's policy and political positions.
But, rather remarkably for such a self-professed liberal operative like Blumenthal, a staggering number of the anti-Obama attacks he circulates derive from highly-ideological and militant right-wing sources such as the misnamed Accuracy in Media (AIM), The Weekly Standard, City Journal, The American Conservative, and The National Review.
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Earlier this year, one theme pushed by Clinton supporters and buoyed by Blumenthal's efforts, was that Obama's appeal was similar to that of a messianic cult leader. Obama's capacity to inspire people was reframed as a kind of malevolent force, as though his followers would somehow willingly drink poisoned Kool-Aid if Obama so demanded. In his February 7 Time magazine column, "Inspiration vs. Substance," writer Joe Klein, who, like Blumenthal, worked on the Boston alternative paper, The Real Paper, in the 1970s, wrote: "There was something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism -- 'We are the ones we've been waiting for' -- of the Super Tuesday speech and the recent turn of the Obama campaign." That same morning, Blumenthal sent the Klein column to his email list. Later that day, in his Political Punch blog, ABC News reporter Jake Tapper wrote, "The Holy Season of Lent is upon us. Can Obama worshippers try to give up their Helter-Skelter cultish qualities for a few weeks?" (Update: In response to OffTheBus, Tapper is categorical in denying that he in any way relied upon Blumenthal or was influenced by Blumenthal in the production or in the writing of this story or his reports on William Ayers or the Obama "cult")
The following day, in the Los Angeles Times, columnist Joel Stein wrote: "Obamaphilia has gotten creepy. What the Cult of Obama doesn't realize is that he is a politician."
After this idea had bounced around the media echo chamber for a few days, the liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America, run by David Brock, posted a summary on February 8 of the sudden outbreak of "cult" references about Obama. It was headlined: "Media figures call Obama supporters' behavior 'creepy,' compare them to Hare Krishna and Manson followers." The next day, Blumenthal sent the Media Matters piece to his email list. A few days later, the New York Times' Paul Krugman, a Clinton supporter, weighed in with a column, "Hate Springs Eternal," in which he wrote, "I'm not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to a cult of personality." Nor would he be the last. Four days later, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, an arch conservative, penned a column entitled, "The Audacity of Selling Hope" in which he simply quoted Klein, Tapper, Stein, and Krugman.
I remember the cult thing -- it was so weird how it came out of nowhere, and then was everywhere. Mystery solved, I guess.
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