Two Republican dirty tricks to watch out for before the November election:
1. Osama Bin Laden is pulled out of hiding a week before the election. Some on the left are suspicious, but it doesn't matter, because the American people are overjoyed, Bush gains 5% in the polls, just enough to put him over the top. FYI, the Republicans have put a lot of pressure on the Pakistanis to find OBL in the next few months.
2. A "terrorist attack" occurs shortly before the election, which either causes the election to be cancelled or causes people to rally around the President. In a time of uncertainty, people pull the lever for Bush and he wins.
The Republicans are well accoustomed to pulling off just such dirty tricks to win Presidential elections.
1968 - Richard Nixon interferred with the Johnson Admin peace negotiations with the Viet Namese, to prevent a pre-election peace settlement and a boost for the Democratic ticket.
1980 - The Reagan campaign seals a secret deal with the Iranians to keep the American hostages in captivity until after Ronald Reagan is innaugurated (a very symbolic show of Republican strength). The secret deal prevented Jimmy Carter from securing the hostages release (he was actively talking to the Iranians), and gaining an "October Surprise" surge at the polls in Nov, 1980.
1988 - George Bush, Sr. launches a blistering attack against his opponent Michael S. Dukakis, unprecedented in American history.
2000 - George Bush, Jr. and his brother do all they can to ensure that Florida falls into the Republican column. Their tactics include using suspect voter purge lists to wipe tens of thousands of people suppossedly convicted of felonies from the voter rolls (many minorities assumed to be likely to vote for Gore). The problem was that a lot of the people who were purged as a result of the list, weren't convicted felons or were from out of state and shouldn't have had their voter registrations invalidated. A dirty trick that obviously worked brilliantly.
Look for more Dirty Tricks in 2004. |
