The Iowa GOP has learned what happens when you spit into the wind -- and it isn't pretty.
An audio tape, recorded at a Republican info-strategy-fundraiser session earlier this month, caught right-wing GOP Senate candidate Greg Ganske, in the presence of Bush senior political adviser and Karl Rove consigliere Ken Mehlman, vowing to destroy Democratic incumbent Senator Tom Harkin with a barrage of slick and vicious attack ads. "You've never seen a campaign where anyone will attack him like we're going to attack him," Ganske says on the tape -- adding, oh so innocently "with a smile on our face...."
Aroused by Ganske's political blood lust, the meeting then degenerated into violent chants and hollers.
Subsequently, the Harkin campaign, obtained and publicized a copy of the deeply embarrassing tape -- and Ganske and the Republicans went into an even more vicious attack mode, charging outright that Harkin supporters had secretly recorded the tape and broken the law. Des Moines police officials, as well as the local Federal attorney's office, were alerted; the national as well as local media broadcast GOP charges that this was just like Watergate; and in general the Republicans went ballistic.
Well, now the person who did the taping has come forward, in a public statement released through his lawyer. And, whaddya' know.....
-- The taper is a REPUBLICAN and past cash CONTRIBUTOR to the Ganske campaign.
-- The taper, who is involved in Des Moines civic affairs, was INVITED to the meeting.
-- Interested especially in hearing Mehlman's remarks, the taper OPENLY recorded the meeting instead of taking notes. Nobody objected.
-- When the proceedings turned ugly -- too ugly for this Ganske supporter -- he handed the perfectly legally-recorded tape over to the Harkin supporters.
As it happens, there is even more -- much more -- to the story than that. Local TV. whores are spinning the story, amazingly, in Ganske's favor, by barely alluding to the taper's past support for the Republicans, or to the ugliness of the proceedings they have on tape in front of them -- ugly proceedings that nobody has denied took place. And there is no sign that the cable news shows that publicized the GOP's phony "Watergate" charges have seen clear, or will see clear, to retracting and correcting them.
In short, the GOP's counteroffensive of distraction and deception, in line with the Karl Rove-Tom Davis RNCC playbook on Social Security, has successfully twisted at least some airhead reporters into believing that, no matter what the facts are, this is a story about Democratic wrongdoing instead of what it really is -- a story of Ganske's and the Iowa GOP's participation in the Rove-Davis national lie-and-smear scandal. These same air-heads solemnly give time to the Republicans' furious back-tracking assertions that some law must have been broken somewhere, that the police are still investigating, and blah, blah, blah.
But the true story couldn't be simpler, now that the taper has come forward. A Republican caught his fellow Republicans mounting a hate and attack campaign against Tom Harkin, got disgusted, and dropped a dime on Greg Ganske. All of the GOP lies about Harkin spies and Harkin lawbreaking and Harkin's "Watergate" (hoo boy!) were and are just that -- baldfaced, calculated lies.
The good people of Iowa get it. (The Republicans, with their own spittle dripping from their faces, look slightly ridiculous in their continued phony outrage, despite local Media Whore efforts to make them look good.)
But will Iowans get the simple truth from the local press -- or just more GOP spin?
Will those national reporters and commentators who broadcast the Iowa Republicans' lies retract and correct them, and report the true story?
More important: when will the national media -- the big metropolitan dailies, the networks, the newsweeklies -- FINALLY report on the GOP's shameless, brazen, nationally-coordinated campaign of lies, in Iowa and the rest of the country? On November 6?
The Ganske outrage is part of a huge national smear effort which MWO has helped expose, and will continue to expose. But when will the national press finally connect the proliferating number of GOP smear dots?
Developing explosively....
theiowachannel.com |
