Anatomy Of A Smear: The Democratic Playbook Revealed
The National Journal’s well-respected and non-partisan Hotline reveals what any thinking person already knew: the Democratic attack machine is in high gear on the Mark Foley story. Since the story broke, I have fought the perception that this is all just unorchestrated outrage and the natural course of events with such a scandal. Read the following and tell me you still believe that:
It may not be as smooth as the Republicans’ Stirling engine, but the Democrats’ party committees are hitting on all cylinders today. They want candidates in each and every House and Senate race to push the Foley scandal to its hilt.
(Sample DSCC release: “Foley Sex Scandal Hits DeWine.” Sample WI Dem party release: “Foley Scandal: What Did Green Know and When Did He Know it?”)
Here’s Dems’ playbook:
1. Pay no heed to the distinction between the e-mails and IMs. There’s no evidence (yet) that any Republican leaders knew about Foley’s cybersex IMs. There’s plenty of evidence that they knew how uncomfortable the “overly friendly” e-mails made at least one page. So the Dems will press the GOP on what they knew about the former and will constantly, in their press releases, refer to the “GOP’s knowledge of the sexually explicit e-mails.”
2. Enlarge the wedge between House leaders. The tension this weekend between Speaker Dennis Hastert and NRCC chair Tom Reynolds was thick. Dems want it to suffocate the party and throw the Republicans even further off their game.
3. Be aggressive about how Dems will — and are — protecting children. Dems want to keep the issue poisonous in a way that’s clear and direct to middle America. (In other words: this ain’t earmarks.)
4. Choose unimpeachable spokespeople to be their public face. The DCCC has enlisted Patty Wetterling, its candidate for MN 06, to call for “a thorough investigation” of the House leadership over Foley. Wetterling’s son, Jacob, was kidnapped in 1989.
5. Deride the Republicans for incompetence. How can you possibly trust them with national security if you can’t trust them with your own children?
6. Bring up Terri Schiavo’s case and compare the heated GOP attention back then to their allegedly lax attention to the welfare of their pages.
7. Compare what the GOP leadership says about Foley with what Republicans said about Jack Abramoff.
8. Use the Foley cash. Already, the DSCC wonders why George Allen didn’t immediately return the Foley. The quotable Phil Singer: “It is more than a little disturbing that Allen apparently sees nothing wrong with holding on to contributions he got from an adult who has been caught sending sexually explicit email to children.” Allen and Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) will return the cash. But the NRCC already spent the $550K and won’t.
Here’s what the Democrats hope to accomplish:
1. Republicans will flinch before they try and use “values” as a cudgel. Can this NRCC ad against Brad Ellsworth be run in this environment?
2. Democrats now have a new way to respond to the Republicans when they go negative: “They’re just trying to distract you from the scandal.”
3. GOP candidates will be thrown on the defensive, generally.
4. Link House candidates — and not just Reynolds — to the sense that that the GOP was hesitant to investigate or even poke around into Foley’s life because they didn’t want to jeopardize their majority. That is, they craved power to the point where they ignored or suppressed warnings.
The smear is right there in plain sight; pay particular attention to this one:
1. Pay no heed to the distinction between the e-mails and IMs. There’s no evidence (yet) that any Republican leaders knew about Foley’s cybersex IMs. There’s plenty of evidence that they knew how uncomfortable the “overly friendly” e-mails made at least one page. So the Dems will press the GOP on what they knew about the former and will constantly, in their press releases, refer to the “GOP’s knowledge of the sexually explicit e-mails.”
If that’s not a smear, then someone switched dictionaries on me.
Nope, folks, no dice…I don’t give a damn if Hastert resigns or not; the Democratic Party is marching to the tune of dirty tricks and character assassination. Don’t anyone ever ask me to cry a tear over Willie Horton again…this is one of the lowest moments I’ve seen in politics…
UPDATE 11:19 p.m.: Right on cue, here’s the NY Times to helpfully do their bit:
History suggests that once a political party achieves sweeping power, it will only be a matter of time before the power becomes the entire point. Policy, ideology, ethics all gradually fall away, replaced by a political machine that exists to win elections and dispense the goodies that come as a result. The only surprise in Washington now is that the Congressional Republicans managed to reach that point of decayed purpose so thoroughly, so fast.
That House leaders knew Representative Mark Foley had been sending inappropriate e-mail to Capitol pages and did little about it is terrible. It is also the latest in a long, depressing pattern: When there is a choice between the right thing to do and the easiest route to perpetuation of power, top Republicans always pick wrong.
No broad-based accusations there, eh?…When did Howard Dean officially join the editorial board, anyway?…
UPDATE 11:45 p.m.: In the interest of fairness, the National Journal printed the Republican playbook, too. Here it is:
The Republican playbook is fairly simple. They remember how the Democratic Party suffered from the perception that Dems in Congress defended Bill Clinton’s conduct. So the first play is to repudiate the conduct and demand that the entire investigative apparatus of the federal government, from the senior-most agents in the FBI to the lowliest computer crime techs at the Secret Service — rush to investigative Foley.
Second, they hope that by being so open and upfront about their calls for an investigation and their disappointment with Foley, they’ll escape the taint.
Third, they’ll emphasize that they didn’t know about the IMs until ABC News reported them.
Fourth, they’ll try to tamp down on internal disagreements about the timeline. This will be hard.
Fifth, the NRCC and GOP candidate ads may get even more brutal (as will the DCCC’s and the Dem candidate spots). And no, the NRCC won’t flinch from using cultural issues. The more independent voters are disgusted by Foley’s comments, the more they’ll be primed to find repulsive any departures from “normal” cultural values. Besides, few non-aligned voters in Indiana’s 8th congressional district know what the NRCC is, anyway. (People see the ads, not who made them.)
Sixth, they’ll pray that either a Democratic member is implicated in similar shenanigans… or that the story goes away soon. Well, this thing won’t be wrapped by week’s end. ABC News is aggressively pursuing the story, and broadly. Other news organizations are, too. Republican lawmakers in tough races will begin to give back Foley contributions, which will, in those races, cut against them for a news cycle.
Seventh: scrub the websites!!!!!
Now, I’ll grant you that I’m biased, but I’m marching to my own drummer here, and I’m not going by a playbook, but a principle. There is only one thing that concerns me: fighting the attempts to make a broad link between Republicans and abuse of children (or turning a blind eye to same, which is just as bad)…
Mark, methinks thou doth protest too much.
You seem to be outraged by what you call a “smear” and what you describe as “dirty tricks and character assassination.” Maybe now you have some small taste for what it’s like to be a Democrat. The GOP has made an art of dirty tricks and character assassination over the years. This is the party of Karl Rove after all. Part of me thinks this scandal is cosmic karma biting the GOP in the ass for years of dispicable behavior.
That said, I don’t even think the “smears” you’re describing are that bad, at least relatively speaking. I think all we’re seeing now is utterly predictable and rather pedestrian political opportunism. The Democrats are trying to capitalize on a doozy of a GOP scandal. And they’re not really saying anything that isn’t being echoed by right-wingers like Michelle Malkin, Bay Buchanan, and the Washington Times editorial staff.
You’re right that people shouldn’t fudge the distinction between the IMs and the emails, but the emails were pretty bad in and of themselves. As Bay Buchanan put it earlier, those emails “had predator stamped all over [them]“. And do you really think that if the situation were reversed, Republicans would be going out of their way to draw the distinction between the emails and the IMs? Really?
This is a full-on, legit scandal (it pretty much has to be to make Republicans turn on each other like this), and you can hardly expect the Democrats to refrain from trying to use it to their advantage. That would be holding the Democrats to an absurdly high standard of conduct, one that the Republican party has never come anywhere close to living by.
It’s unfortunate in a sense that a scandal like this had to distract us from more important issues (like the devasting revelations in Bob Woodwards book), but that’s life. The reason this is resonating so much is because it is lurid and it plays right into the meme that Republicans care more about retaining power than anything else.
And just to be clear, the Democratic talking point about protecting children isn’t an assertion that Republicans are all sexual predators or something like that. No one would believe that anyway. People aren’t that stupid. The assertion is that the Republican leadership cared more about pretecting their tenuous hold on power than they did about protecting the pages from a potential predator. Hence, the Republican Congress had higher priorities than protecting children.
That’s the talking point. It’s highly partisan, sure, but it’s not totally baseless. In fact, the basic claim seems to be pretty well supported at this point, at least with respect to Hastert and a few others. This “smear” is pretty tame relative to past GOP smears, including Willie Horton, which you mention in your post.
no one is going to change their vote over this scandal. democratics will not be any more motivated now than they were in 02, after they were ‘robbed’ in fl. They won’t be any more motivated than they were in 04, after getting their clocks cleaned-against conventional wisdom.
The only people who get motivated by this scandal are the the gop base, depressed on immigration and fiscal spending, but who would be inclined to actually vote if they perceived the dems were trying to be portray them as the party that would aid and abet a child molester.
I applaud and welcome your efforts to keep Foley gate alive. it gives a national forum to the pile of crap that howie is about to step in. and like a good progressive, he just can’t help himself.
Please explain to me how Willie Horton was a smear.
The Dukakis furlough program lets a convicted murderer out of jail. Said murderer performs unspeakable acts of violence while on furlough. Dukakis is held responsible by the Bush campaign.
That constitutes a smear, Anonymous?
The Democrats are peaking too early – this will pass as an issue long before November.
If the Republicans are smart they will turn to today’s WSJ op-ed for a few talking points. An exerpt:
Paging Mr. Hastert
October 3, 2006; Page A26
Florida Republican Mark Foley’s sexually explicit emails to a Congressional page certainly warranted his resignation from the House, and they may well merit prosecution. But this being five weeks from an election, the GOP House leadership is also being assailed for not having come down more strongly on a gay Congressman for showing a more than friendly interest in underage boys. That’s a different issue altogether.
At least this seems to be the essence of the Democratic and media charge against Speaker Dennis Hastert, who admits his office was told months ago about a friendly, non-explicit 2005 email exchange between Mr. Foley and another page. In that exchange, Mr. Foley had asked the teenager “how old are you now” and requested “an email pic.”
…
Yes, Mr. Hastert and his staff should have done more to quarantine Mr. Foley from male pages after the first email came to light. But if that’s the standard, we should all admit we are returning to a rule of conduct that our cultural elite long ago abandoned as intolerant.
This is an interesting observation by the NY Times because it reflects my realization a few days back about why I don’t want the Democrats to do well in November. They were the party of power for so long and basically refused to yield that power even when they became the minority–hence the filibusters and the grandstanding at press conferences every night. They’re addicted to power and want the power back so badly they can barely see straight.
Many people have cited the Democrats’ lack of an agenda. They aren’t really saying what they’ll do when they regain control (besides impeach Bush, end the war, and eliminate the successful tax breaks so they can fund programs for “the underclass”). Getting back in power seems to be their only objective.
Sadly, these days, Washington is a grown-up version of king of the hill. It doesn’t matter what you have to do to get up there, and once you’re there, you’ll do anything to stay on top…
In less turbulent times, I might be inclined to let the balance of power change hands just to achieve some equilibrium, but these are times of trouble and we can’t afford to let our nation’s safety and well-being be sacrificed to satisfy the Democrats’ unquenchable thirst for power.
[...] Also checkout Mark Coffey’s rundown of the mechanics of this smear campaign and ask yourself how all this could not be orchestrated. [...]
Hey relish, what I find most interesting about that NY Times observation is I’m reasonably sure it’s not an observation they would have made in 1994, even though the circumstances were the same, even moreso (Democrats had held the House for more than three times the current Republican reign).
And Hotline on Call also carried this priceless quote from Jon Stewart:
“The Foley saga quickly sent leaders of the North American Man-Boy Love Association, or Congress, into action” (“Daily Show”).
When they start laughing at you, you’re finished.
mtl: “This is really good news for the Republican Party. Bring it on!”
At least its better than something along the lines of, “Oh yeah, well 23 years ago a Democrat got caught screwing a page (lowers voice) and a Republican did, too (raises voice again) and they didn’t do nothing. Oh yeah, and Bill Clinton”.
Well, let’s see, they were both censured. The Republican had engaged in a heterosexual affair with a minor, and the Republicans voted him out of office the next election. The Democrat had engaged in a homosexual affair with a minor, and he went on to be reelected more than once…Seems like the Republicans do a better job of cleaning house when a scandal erupts.
If the tables were turned, would you be as quick to call for a democrat’s head?
Oh yeah, and Bill Clinton…
in all my disgust about his mark rich pardon, I had forgotten he pardoned a congressman convicted of having sex with a minor. That little fact is sure to slip its way into severla small town editorials.
#4 Evan October 3rd, 2006 at 2:22 am
Please explain to me how Willie Horton was a smear.
Because the furlough program under which Horton was furloughed had been created under an earlier Republican governor, and it was encouraged by the federal government–which was had been controlled by Republican President Reagan. And other states had similar furlough programs. You didn’t know that, did you?
Al gore was the first person to use Willie horton…
Raj, spare me the smug schtick…
The prisoner furlough program was started by GOP governor Francis Sargent in the early 70′s, as you allude, but the Dukakis furlough program allowed for the release of FIRST-DEGREE MURDERERS. His veto of the bill which would have kept the murderers in prison by making them ineligeble for the program made the issue worth discussion – to the disasterous effect it had on the Dukakis candidacy.
The fact that the Bush campaign went forward with the Willie Horton ads was not a smear. It raised a legitimate question as to whether the American people wanted a president who didn’t have a problem with murderers roaming the streets on weekends.
Wow, if this is the lowest point you have ever seen in politics, then you have been pretty d*mn blind over the last five years.
Thanks for the support, Nev, if that really is your name…
Maybe Nev Ermind is related to Nosmo King.
Ooh. Ouch. You poor, poor little babies. Crying foul like the bullies you are.
Republicans. What is really great about this, of course, is that you prissy haters are supposedly the party of Moral Values (whatever that means). I think it’s not karma, but God punishing you for the decidedly un-Christian way you have treated the world since you took power. Bill Clinton, my ass. You are despicable murdering hypocrites and that’s all there is to it. Here’s a conspiracy theory for you: when Gore is elected he will use his unlimited power and round you all up in the middle of the night while your families and neighbors watch (and applaud) and have you disappeared for the rest of your unnatural lives, or longer. Then I’ll rest easy. Thanks for that torture bill, suckers.God, that was mean. I sound like a
Repubnow. I guess it’s a natural consequence of being a part of the party in control of Congress. So long!From the Daily Kos:
Things you can count on the Republican leadership to screw up:
The deficit. Body armor. Medicare reform. Social Security reform. The minimum wage. Port security. The National Guard. Diplomacy. The Geneva Conventions. Fair elections. Clean elections. Intelligence. Protecting the Constitution. Protecting the Bill of Rights. Government transparency. Oversight. Separation of church and state. The middle class. The poor. Tax reform. Tax cuts. Bankruptcy law. Global warming. Disaster management. Defeating terrorists. Saying no to lobbyists. Saying yes to public opinion. Pre-war planning. Post-war planning. Competence. Civil rights. Civil liberties. Civil debate. Veterans’ benefits. Hiring based on ability. Legal surveillance. Morality. Energy policy. Energy independence. End-of-life decisions among spouses. Inclusion. Learning lessons from history. Learning, period. Drug policy. Fiscal responsibility. Trusting the generals. Trusting the spooks. Trusting the experts. Basic honesty. Basic health care. Education. Creating jobs. Keeping CIA operatives’ identities secret. Catching Osama. Playing nice. Playing fair. Refilling ice cube trays. Making paper airplanes. Or coffee. Tying their shoelaces. Making friends. Blowing their noses. Counting to ten five three. Sharing their toys. Telling the truth. Uniting the country. Protecting underage kids from a predatory congressman.
Wow, that’s great stuff, Lance. Did kindergarten get out early today?
Nothing’s more amusing than watching a hateful progressive rant about how hateful Republicans are. Now run along, junior, we cater to adults here…
Ooh. Called me immature and owned me with that ‘hateful’ label. SMACKDOWN. You ARE a bully aren’t you, Brutus? What’s wrong, kiddo? Shoe’s on the other foot now, isn’t it? Get used to it and wipe the tears away. It’s going to be a long 10 years. Remember, if nothing else, you think God loves you.
I’ll tell you the truth, though, in all seriousness. It’s been so long since I’ve had an adult conversation with anybody from the other party, I’ve given up trying. I’m not saying that to be mean or to smear you. It’s just the truth, unfortunately.
Some things grownup Republican do fairly regularly:
- Call women ‘murderers’ for wanting control of their own body
- Support the slaughter in Iraq which is killing real children, and lots of them, as if somehow it’s better for Iraqis to die instead of Americans
- Continue to support a president who not only is LYING to his country (I’d include a link here but you read the news last week and for the last six years) but who, as governor of Texas, probably put to death a lot of innocent people
- State that gay couples are somehow going to destroy straight marriages
- State that loving gay parents somehow corrupt children who would otherwise waste away in the foster care system (How is that better? Seriously?)
- Preach that homosexuality is sinful when their leaders in Congress shelter predators like Mark Foley in order to hang on to your power.
C’mon, man, that’s just plain wrong. The Republicans are haters and bigots and hypocrites, and yes, bullying children. Sorry, that’s just how it is.
You start thinking for yourself and realize that profiting from human suffering is not entertaining but very, very sick, then we’ll talk. ‘Course if that ever happened, you’d be a progressive. Like me. I’d even invite you over for milk and cookies.
Funny, you come to my blog and act like I sought an argument with you…I’ve got plenty of regulars, pal, and we get along fine. Bring something to the conversation and we’ll have one…strut around and stereotype Republicans (but you’re a tolerant progressive – how can you stereotype?), and I’ll quickly ignore you…starting…NOW!…
Okay, I apologize. You were talking about progressives making a link between Republicans and child abuse:
If you’ll re-read my points in my last comment, you’ll have to agree that I’ve stuck to your original post. All of those things that grownup Republicans regularly say and do are abusive to children, either directly or indirectly. Why do you think Democrats are so pissed off? What your party and this administration is doing to this country and the world is not making it a better place for our children. Global warming. Denying a child loving parents. Creating more terrorists.
Man, I could go on and on. But I don’t have to. You know what you’ve done and what you’ve supported. It’s all here in your blog, and you have to live with it. “Nutroots”? That’s great. I’m supposed to not respond to that? You’re just all agog because the Dems are fighting hypocracy with their ‘attack machine’ and attempting to show the thinking part of the country who our leaders really are.
I notice that you didn’t try to refute or defend even one of the points I made. All you do is call me immature. You can ignore me all you want, but that is precisely what is costing Republicans the support of the few people who are still hanging on. As your leadership ignores more and more people who cotton to your party’s disasterous policies and bumbling ineptitude and speak the truth against them, the Republican base is shrinking. Which is not a bad thing for the children of former Republicans.
I’ve tried being reasonable but you people (I don’t even know what to call you anymore, conservativism is extinct) really don’t seem to see or care what effect you’re having on our children or our neighbors. You call me tolerant like it’s a bad thing. It must be. I don’t see many Republicans practicing the Golden Rule these days.
All right, first of all: don’t conflate me with a generic concept called ‘Republican’. I answer to myself, as you do to yourself. I’m hardly a party hack, and the fact that you think I am shows an unfamiliarity with this blog. That’s fine; I don’t have the largest traffic numbers…but you act as if you know my work and you clearly don’t.
How do you think the children of the people in the mass graves in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq felt? How about the ones who died in the chemical weapons attack on the Kurdish areas, where he went after his own people with WMDs? Who is killing children in Iraq? Americans? Hardly…terrorists, my friend, suicide bombers, not American soldiers.
You’re twisted around on who the good guys are, and that’s not a Republican or Democratic thing, that’s moral relativism, and it’s so, so wrong.
We can have a conversation, but you have to drop annoying habits like your monolithic view of evil Republicans if you want it to be a productive one. Don’t assume your political opponents act out of bad faith…all of us try to do the right thing, even if we are sometimes wrong. Democrats want what’s best for this country, and so do Republicans…in the abstract. However, crap like this Foley thing makes everyone run around like monkeys and forget the problems that need our undivided attention.
You want out of Iraq, I bet…so do I…I want to win first, but I do want out…wouldn’t our time be spent much more profitably on that issue than on this b.s.? How about Iran? Have we solved that problem yet? I don’t Mark Foley’s instant messages are going to matter a hell of a lot to Ahmadinejad.
I humbly suggest to you that you rethink your idea that Republicans are the enemy. We are not…we are your neighbors and friends and co-workers. Our enemies are very real, and they are very active, and this nonsense is a distraction…
#14 Evan October 3rd, 2006 at 4:10 pm
The prisoner furlough program was started by GOP governor Francis Sargent in the early 70’s, as you allude, but the Dukakis furlough program allowed for the release of FIRST-DEGREE MURDERERS. His veto of the bill which would have kept the murderers in prison by making them ineligeble for the program made the issue worth discussion…
So, via the bolded portion, you appear to be admitting that the program started by GOP Governor Sargent allowed first degree murderers to be furloughed. Or do you have any evidence that the Sargent furlough program did not allow for the furloughing of first degree murders?
By “evidence,” I mean evidence, not just your say-so.
Two things, Raj-
1) I do not know if the original Sargent program allowed for release of convicted murderers. I am admitting to nothing because I’m not familiar with the facts surrounding the program’s inception in 1972. However, this is totally irrelevant to the intial challenge that the prison furlough/Willie Horton issue was not a smear on Dukakis, but a legitimate questioning of a politically weak area for the Democrat in 1988.
2) The said irrelevance is made so by the fact that Dukakis vetoed a bill which would have kept convicted murderers from ever being furloughed. If you are looking for bill numbers and dates, I don’t have them, but this fact is mentioned by almost every public encyclopedia at which I’ve looked. This veto made the issue fair game as a matter of public record. Dukakis said, with his veto, that we was willing to risk more Willie Hortons instead of using his power to correct an outrageous system which released violent criminals back onto the streets. My original question remains: how is it a smear to question a public official’s stance on crime when he supports a program allowing violent criminals to be released?
Despite its irrelevance to my question, I would say that I believe Sargant’s program, with or without the furlough of murderers to be as ridiculous as Dukakis’ support and championing of it (Though I can’t PROVE it beyond my “say-so”, I would be willing to bet that the furlough program was likely expanded and stretched by Dukakis beyond the initial reaches of the Sargent program). Criminals, and especially violent ones, should be locked up in jail – period.