Memories of Dirty Tricks Past: The Nixon White House/GOP slimes Ed Muskie

[villager]

From a long article about Watergate. Be ever vigilant, DUers -- and don't fall for it again. Remember, the GOP hasn't changed a bit since then, unless you count becoming even *more* sociopathic:

<snip>

Under the direction of Donald Segretti, a young UCLA-trained attorney (whose name fittingly means “Secrets” in Italian), the White House engaged in a dirty-tricks campaign against Sen. Edmund S. Muskie of Maine, who in early 1972 had been widely regarded as the strongest of Nixon’s potential Democratic opponents. Segretti launched stink bombs at Muskie rallies, paid a young woman to run naked through the senator’s hotel yelling “I love Muskie,” and disseminated thousands of fliers in the black neighborhoods of Milwaukee falsely advertising free beer and food and an appearance by Coretta Scott King at a Muskie event.

Throughout the early Democratic primary season, Segretti, an independent contractor paid with CREEP funds but working under the direction of White House aide Dwight Chapin, threw the frontrunner’s campaign into disarray, issuing fake press releases and event schedules and churning out incendiary bumper stickers that read, “Help Muskie in Busing More Children.”

More troubling than Segretti’s dirty-tricks campaign was Nixon’s vendetta against the press, which led Rolling Stone reporter Timothy Crouse to observe that “no other president has ever worked so lovingly or painstakingly to emasculate reporters.” Nixon would later claim that “the majority of New York and Washington newspaper and television reporters, news executives, columnists, and opinion makers are liberals.”

Yet he ignored the generally favorable treatment he had received over his long political career. In 1960, he received 54 percent of national newspaper endorsements to Kennedy’s 15. In 1968, he won 61 percent of all editorial page endorsements, to 14 percent for Humphrey, and in 1972, he garnered three-quarters, compared with just five percent for George McGovern.

<snip>

http://www.americanheritage.com/events/articles/web/20080110-watergate-scandal-richard-nixon-trial-cia-impeachment-gordon-liddy-watergate-7-creep.shtml

[lapfog_1]

1. Segretti coined the term (or at least popularized it) "ratfucking"

He says it came from his college republican days. The dirty tricks squad. Figures.

Lee Atwater took this to a whole new level... and his top protege was... Karl Rove.

Sadly, some democrats think that we need to "fight fire with fire" which, in this case, means the same kind of tactics used by the ratfuckers.

There are many examples of such tactics in the current primary race.

[villager]

2. Well, we absolutely do need to play hardball with these ratfuckers

And quit rolling over for them...