During the last Israeli election campaigns, Jon Stewart warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he might be facing a lawsuit — over stealing American election strategies.
Netanyahu had claimed his opponents were bringing in Arab voters by the busload in an effort to get his more conservative base to turn out. The strategy paid off with a big win for the prime minister’s Likud Party.
“How dare you. How dare you gin up racist fears of minority turnout for short-term political gain,” Stewart said on a “The Daily Show” segment. “That’s our thing. You know what? Now you’ve got a copyright infringement suit on your hands, pal!”
Indeed, he was using a Republican ploy.
“You know that stuff you say in private, your core beliefs, your prejudices that you try to hide from people because you fear society would shun you?” Stewart said. “Well, it appears all you have to do is turn into that skid.”
Well, negative campaigns work. That’s why campaigns employ clever, corrupt, cunning staffers.
Already, the dirt, the jokes, the untruths are filling Republican controlled media about Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Interestingly, opponent Bernie Saunders has gone relatively unscathed. Maybe the Republicans are behind Saunders to win, believing he would be easier to beat because of his Socialist label.
Anyway, for months now, America Rising has sent out a steady stream of posts on social media attacking Clinton, some of them specifically designed to be spotted, and shared, by liberals. The posts highlight critiques of her connections to Wall Street and the Clinton Foundation and feature images of Democrats like Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, interspersed with cartoon characters and pictures of Kevin Spacey, who plays the villain in “House of Cards.” And as they are read and shared, an anti-Clinton narrative is reinforced.
The America Rising PAC was set up in Spring 2013 to serve as an organization on the right for the sole purpose of trashing Democrats through video tracking, research and communications. American Crossroads, the group started by Karl Rove, has been sending out digital content, including one ad using a speech Warren gave at the New Populism Conference in Washington last May. “Powerful interests have tried to capture Washington and rig the system in their favor,” intones Warren, as images of Clinton with foreign leaders flash by.
“The idea is to make her life difficult in the primary and challenge her from the left,” said Colin Reed, America Rising’s executive director. “We don’t want her to enter the general election not having been pushed from the left, so if we have opportunities — creative ways, especially online — to push her from the left, we’ll do it just to show those folks who she needs to turn out that she’s not in line with them.”
Steven Law, president of American Crossroads, said the goal was simply to erode what should be her natural core of support, adding, “It can diminish enthusiasm for Hillary among the base over time. And if you diminish enthusiasm, lukewarm support can translate into lackluster fund-raising and perhaps diminished turnout down the road.”
Dirty politics? Of course. If you think it’s dirty now, you should go back in history and check out other campaigns. Rick Ungar wrote in Forbes magazine and did just that.
“When it comes to negative campaign advertising and rhetoric, today’s candidates aren’t even in the same league as our own Founding Founders—and the many presidential contenders who have followed—when it comes to playing rough in the game of electoral politics,” he said.
He singled out the election of 1800 when President John Adams and Vice-President Thomas Jefferson squared off in a race for the White House and established a tradition of negative campaigning. A John Adams supporter publically suggested that were Jefferson to become the president, “we would see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution.” The concern was amplified by an influential — and highly partisan — Connecticut newspaper’s warning that electing Jefferson would create a nation where “murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will openly be taught and practiced.”
A Jefferson supporter, James Callender, an influential journalist of the time, wrote that Adams was a rageful, lying, warmongering fellow; a “repulsive pedant” and “gross hypocrite” who “behaved neither like a man nor like a woman but instead possessed a hideous hermaphroditical character.”
That reminded me of the story about a race in Florida where a candidate ran an ad about his opponent: He’s a known homosapien with heterosexual tendencies; once, he even went to New York where he worked as a thespian. The ad worked. Voters need to know the meaning of words.
The Stephen Douglas-Abraham Lincoln debates fill libraries. But in high school, many students missed this Douglas accusation: Lincoln was a drunk — stating that the future emancipator could “ruin more liquor than all the boys in town together.”
Richard Nixon’s dirty tricks campaigns might be considered the most underhanded. As President, he used government agencies, from the IRS to the CIA, to gain information on opponents — in 1969, he had compiled a list of 200 enemies.
However, Lee Atwater may be the No. 1 trickster. He was an adviser to presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and chairman of the Republican National Committee. Atwater’s aggressive tactics were first demonstrated during the 1980 Congressional campaigns. He was a campaign consultant to Republican incumbent Floyd Spencin against Democratic nominee Tom Turnipseed. Atwater utilized false push polls and sent out last-minute letters from Senator Strom Thurmond telling voters that Turnipseed would disarm America and turn it over to liberals and Communists. At a press briefing, Atwater planted a fake reporter who rose and said, “We understand Turnipseed has had psychotic treatment.”
Atwater developed the infamous Willie Horton ad against Democrat Michael Dukakis, promoted the Republican Southern Strategy and demeaned speaker of the U.S. House with a flyer “Tom Foley: Come out of the liberal closet” with a comparison to gay representative Barney Frank.
Republicans are gearing up for the 2016 election, pushing voter suppression acts as a foundation. As time goes by, you’ll see more, like:
- Demoralize the Democratic base with phony press releases and whisper campaigns.
- Attack opponents strength with character assassination.
- Buy some people off with tax cuts.
- Scare the rest into voting against their own interests.
Voters must learn to discern fact from fiction.