Dwight, it sure sounds like somebody has a really bad case of the old black pot and kettle disease.
Clinton and his supporters have taught Republicans a valuable lesson: *Never* forget about politics. *Push* every political advantage to paint the opposition with the smear brush. . .
Much blah blah blah deleted
Welcome to the new world. It's gonna be brutal. Your hero Clinton created it. . .
That's one way of looking at things. I'd say Newt beat Clinton to the punch by a few years. Not to mention Richard Nixon, though he was in ill repute for a while. The "brutal new world" looks like old hat to me, on one side of the aisle anyway. Jim Wright, some puny $60k book deal- he's outta here. Newt, $6million or so from Rupert Murdoch, who just happened to have a few issues before Congress- What's the problem?
And we have the delicious irony of Ken Starr, who everybody without strict partisan blinders on is beginning to see as the consummate partisan smear artist, being called the victim of a partisan smear campaign. Or to you find the voluminous lurid detail of the Starr report to be "just the facts", as you'd like them to be presented? Not to mention the roots of the whole thing in the "Arkansas Project" dirt digging expedition, a pet project of Starr's before he became the non-partisan, "just the facts" Special Prosecutor. And I suppose you found the Bush campaigns the epitome of squeaky clean, issues based politics too. Willy Horton, there was no distortion or smear tactics there, and that was 4 years before Clinton's first campaign. George Bush never tried to get personal against Clinton, either. Do you want to point out some equivalent of Willy Horton in either of Clinton's two campaigns? Lee Atwater, at least, was sort of apologetic about Willy Horton in the end. Maybe we'll see something about that from George when he faces his maker? I'm not holding my breath, personally.
Brave new world indeed. We've been there a while. To repeat a line, the main parallel I see between Watergate and the current mess is the Republican dirty tricks at the core. Funny thing is, I've seen this "smear tactic" whine before, used as a defense of smear tactics, there used to be a Senator from my home state who bizarrely won two terms with it. It finally caught up to him the third time around. Smear tactics have a long history here, though, this being the home state of Joe McCarthy. He was a Republican too, as was the unnamed Senator.
Oops, this is probably a little long for you Dwight, so I'll repeat one question. What Clinton campaign smear can you point to, in either '92 or '96, that was at all comparable to Bush's "Willy Horton" campaign, smear-wise? Or is this one of the usual objectivity and bias things, people you agree with are objectively presenting facts, and people you disagree with are biased smear artists?
Cheers, Dan. |
