If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. - Samuel Adams, 1776
Many people love conspiracies. They love to wallow in it. They love to spread word about it because, perhaps, they feel it shows how superior they are to the target of the conspiracy and how they now know the "Truth".
One of the masters of the conspiracy is President Bush's Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President, Karl "Baghdad Bob" Rove. According to an article in the current Atlantic Monthly, and excerpted here:
So now we get some details about how the Rove treatment works -- and not just speculation, but with descriptions from former Rove staffers who helped organize some of his trademark whispering campaigns.
An article out this week in The Atlantic Monthly focuses specifically on a series of races Rove ran in Texas and Alabama in the 1990s.
The Alabama races in particular haven't gotten that much national press attention in the past. And one of the most lizardly passages in the article describes how Rove launched a whispering campaign against one Democratic opponent suggesting that the candidate -- a sitting Alabama state Supreme Court Justice, who had long worked on child welfare issues -- was in fact a pedophile ... When his term on the court ended, he chose not to run for re-election. I later learned another reason why. Kennedy had spent years on the bench as a juvenile and family-court judge, during which time he had developed a strong interest in aiding abused children. In the early 1980s he had helped to start the Children's Trust Fund of Alabama, and he later established the Corporate Foundation for Children, a private, nonprofit organization. At the time of the race he had just served a term as president of the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse and Neglect. One of Rove's signature tactics is to attack an opponent on the very front that seems unassailable. Kennedy was no exception.
Some of Kennedy's campaign commercials touted his volunteer work, including one that showed him holding hands with children. "We were trying to counter the positives from that ad," a former Rove staffer told me, explaining that some within the See camp initiated a whisper campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile. "It was our standard practice to use the University of Alabama Law School to disseminate whisper-campaign information," the staffer went on. "That was a major device we used for the transmission of this stuff. The students at the law school are from all over the state, and that's one of the ways that Karl got the information out—he knew the law students would take it back to their home towns and it would get out." This would create the impression that the lie was in fact common knowledge across the state. "What Rove does," says Joe Perkins, "is try to make something so bad for a family that the candidate will not subject the family to the hardship. Mark is not your typical Alabama macho, beer-drinkin', tobacco-chewin', pickup-drivin' kind of guy. He is a small, well-groomed, well-educated family man, and what they tried to do was make him look like a homosexual pedophile. That was really, really hard to take."
This is just one snippet from the piece. But when you read the whole thing, what happened in South Carolina in 2000 and what's happening now with Kerry and the Swift Boat business will all seem a lot more clear.
So just who is Karl Rove? This article here reports Rove mentored under one Donald Segretti. History buffs may remember Segretti, during President Nixon's administration, as a member of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP). Segretti headed the section of CREEP charged with counterfeiting documents; spreading lies; false rumors/conspiracies and in general; fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
One of his more famous exploits include an attempt to hire prostitutes as part of an organized campaign to discredit Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson by putting him in what would appear to be a compromising position. Another, for which he served four-and-a-half months in prison and was disbarred for two years, was the creation of a document, on forged letterhead, falsely claiming that Senator Jackson had fathered an illegitimate child with a 17-year old girl.
At the knees of that master, did Karl Rove learn. In the 2000 presidential campaign, Rove targeted Senator John McCain (R-Arizona). McCain, fresh from a victory in New Hampshire over then Governor George W. Bush, needed to be stopped. So, using classic Republican techniques, Rove started a whispering campaign saying Senator McCain, rather than being a Vietnam war hero, acted as an informant while as a prisoner of war in Vietnam; that McCain had fathered an illegitimate African-American daughter (if it works against Jackson it'll work against McCain, but add in the African-American part to win the South); his wife's drug "abuse"; and finally, seemingly countering the illegitimate child angle, that McCain was a homosexual.
These techniques were eerie precursors to the present presidential campaign. The common thread being: attack the opponents strengths. If your opponent is a Vietnam hero, insinuate that he collaborated with or aided the enemy. If he is a good family man, say he fathered an illegitimate child. If he is a strong Christian, claim that he is gay. If his wife is anti-illegal drugs, whisper that she is a drug abuser.
The saddest thing of all is that these techniques sometimes work. Senator McCain lost in 2000 to George W. Bush while Bush went on to win against Vice President Al Gore.
But it doesn't have to be that way because, in the end, you can choose fear, uncertainty, and doubt, or you can choose freedom. You can choose fascism or you can choose democracy. You can choose openness or you can choose secrecy. Choose wisely.
Aloha!
