GOP Playing on Fears: The Worst Kept Secret in Washington

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My fellow Americans,

It seems that the liberal press is once again working overtime to create a tempest in a tea pot regarding some silly memo regarding campaign strategy used by the Republican National Committee.

Evidently, this so-called memo promotes the use of fear-based tactics, character assassination, racial hysteria, and muckraking in campaigns, and urge republican candidates to portray the president and other democrats as driving the country to socialism.

Leaving aside the likely truth that this so-called memo is a fake, fabricated by the left-wing conspiracy in order to paint true and loyal Americans as dishonest (or at least unethical), the bigger question is why this is news at all?

Have all of you people been in a coma for the past 100 years?  Every important political campaign since John Adams smeared Thomas Jefferson as a slave loving fancy-lad has involved playing on the voters' fears. Whether it's me questioning my opponent's patriotism by making baseless accusations that they're a communist; George HW Bush raising the ghosts of racial horror by using a mug-shot to imply that Michael Dukakis will set free wild eyed negroes to feast on the tender flesh of the nation's pure white daughters; or George W Bush terrorizing people with the looming apocalypse of their christian civilization at the hands of bloodthirsty muslim zealots, poltics is a lowest-common-denominator business.

 

You gonna get raped

And the public are lemmings - either too drunk or too stupid to ever catch on.  Paradoxically, the bigger and more outrageously one creates the fear, the more the dopes believe it, because only then does it seem plausible.  The rubes out in the cornfields who cling to their bibles and hold guns and NASCAR sacred need this.  Fear breeds hate, and hate is a great motivating factor.  When you get people to hate something, you can use that to your advantage. The Nazis understood this, and it's something we republicans have adopted as our own. It doesn't matter who you make the threat: communists, homosexuals, hippies, minorities, illegal immigrants, students and intellectuals, muslims, the French - all you have to do is pick a group to blame for all the current problems, then associate your opponent with them. 

This so-called memo isn't news.  It's the republican way.

Nixon is: Confused About the Fuss

Sen. Jim Bunning: A Profile In Courage

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My fellow Americans,

It isn't often that we get to witness a lone man display extreme tenacity in the face of adversity.  Particularly not in the world of politics, where one's integrity is often compromised several times in an hour in order to help expedite a lunch order.

Happily, today we get to see a supreme example of a man who absolutely does not care about anything but himself.  A man whose narcissism and delusion are so grand that it defies description. A man who perfectly exemplifies the attitude of "I don't care about you.  Fuck you."

Senator Jim Bunning, (R. KY) is nothing if not a giant middle finger to every American who is struggling during this long recession.  By single-handedly holding up the passage of a bill to extend unemployment and COBRA benefits to more than a million needy Americans, Sen. Bunning is showing a level of disdain and contempt for the common man not seen since Marie Antoinette.

 

This is the world's smallest violin playing just 

for the unemployed slobs out there.

And why should Sen. Bunning give a wet rat's ass about you, your kids, or that guy down the street who lost his job? Sure, it's easy to simply categorize him (as the Democrats and liberal press are doing) as a heartless a man who has nothing but hatred and scorn for people out of work. And my comment about that is, so what?  I applaud Jim Bunning for standing up for himself.  Whether his cause is right or not doesn't matter.  Every now and then a politician has to stand up and remain strong, regardless of what the issue is.  Even if it means dragging the country through prolonged agony.

However, the most delightful aspect of all is when Sen. Bunning read a letter from "Robert in Louisville" who is supposedly out of work, but supportive of Bunning's stalling the unemployment assistance bill.  It's one of the oldest lies in the book (and one I used with great success in my Checkers speech): you fabricate some poor slob without two nickles to rub together to represent all those working class Joes who will get screwed by your policy, and claim they wrote you to say that even though you're making them suffer, they support you and will sacrifice for you because you're doing The Right Thing.  And the rubes buy it every time. It's sublime.  It's elegant.  It's the Nixon way. 

Of course, ultimately Sen. Bunning will lose his crusade, and the bill will pass.  And he'll slink back to the hills of Kentucky, where he'll dream of the good old days of lounging on a porch, sipping Juleps while listening to the dulcet sounds of the darkies working the fields, and dreaming of spending half an hour in the dusky embrace of his octaroon housekeeper.  But in the mean time, Jim Bunning has reminded us all of what America once was.  A nation of God Fearing White Christians who could do what they wanted without concern over sacrificing the poor, the colored, or the immigrants, and who could have any who disagreed labeled a communist and thrown in jail.

Ah, nostalgia!

Nixon Approves

Slap-Fight in the GOP

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My fellow Americans,

As you could probably tell, my mood of late hasn’t been good, what with the shenanigans of that dingbat from Alaska and her family, and my ex-Chief of Staff sliding into the great beyond. It’s felt like the summer of 1974 all over again, only this time without the solace of sycophants like Henry, Tex, and the Bobs to help me out. Thank god for bourbon and anti-depressants. 

But there is a bit of light peeking through the clouds.  There is nothing that can bring me out of my doldrums quicker than a good old fashioned political slap-fight . The deceit, duplicity, degradation, and depravity that comes when politicians start calling one another’s character into question is like slamming pure, uncut bliss.

Unfortunately, it’s the republican party which is apparently undergoing a bit of an identity crisis.  Tempers are rising and egos getting bruised as the hacks, misanthropes, ward-heelers, waterheads, and dopes all start pointing fingers, making accusations, and claim the mantle of top conservative. And in doing so, they’ll eventually need to look back to how we used to do it back in the day.  Bring out the big guns.  Political campaign is nothing but controlled slander, and the one who does it the best usually wins.   

The trick is to be completely unrestrained and uninhibited about how you assassinate the character of your competitor. I know it sounds absurd, but the more unbelievable, bold, and shameless your attacks, the more the rubes will buy it. It’s an art form, and one that the republicans, sadly, seem to have forgotten.  Look at 2008.  The McCain campaign made a few minor assaults on Obama’s integrity and allegiance (mainly in the form of clumsy and uninspired speeches), but they were so feeble, it was clear they were lies. Now compare that with my first campaign in 1946, when I mercilessly slandered Jerry Voorhis by calling him a communist.  Of course he wasn’t a communist, and of course the people knew he wasn’t.  But my brave strategy of calling him one paid off, and I whipped him like a runaway slave.  Why?  Because the outrageous and contemptible lies fed the public’s desire to believe.  Truth, like compassion, has no place in politics.

The sad thing is that none of the current crop of dimwits in the republican party know what a real conservative is anyway.  Now, Barry Goldwater, there was a real conservative.  I knew Barry Goldwater.  I served my country with Barry Goldwater.  Barry Goldwater was a friend of mine. And I can say with complete confidence that Rush Limbaugh is no Barry Goldwater.

Nixon: Approves

Whore: A Definition by Example

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My fellow Americans,

There are very few things that can make me turn my head and fight the primitive reaction to vomit in disgust.  Student protests are one.  Smug, pompous, privileged, Harvard-educated Franklins are another.

But sadly, neither of those things is the cause today.  I've just found that one of those miserable Palin kids will be on some saccharine television program preaching the importance of abstinence (I can't recall her name - something like Bottlecap, or Whiplash.  Anyway, she's the unwed high-school mommy).

For a moment, lets leave aside the incredible hypocrisy of using a girl who spread her legs like butter on toast to tell others to not give in to their throbbing biological urges.  This is yet another example of Caribou Barbie's ludicrous insincerity in terms of using her mewling spawn as fodder for her political ambitions, while at the same time loudly wailing whenever any of her litter is then mocked by the press.

Now, I understand the need to employ an aggressive campaign strategy by constantly attacking a straw-man, and the need to adopt creative means to maintain some semblance of public attention while not in office.  However, my choice of straw-men were hidden communists, and my choice of maintaining public attention was to continue to bolster my already impressive foreign relations experience by taking trips around the world to visit different leaders and further reinforce the perception that Nixon is a man who understands what is Really Going On.  Something a vapid backwater semi-governor who somehow equated proximity to a foreign country with foreign policy might consider.  But what I would never do is pimp out my daughter, Tricia, for the cameras and gain exposure vicariously through her.  Unlike candidate Milf, I have limits to my degradation.

When I consider what has happened to the once proud Republican party - the party of Teddy Roosevelt and Ike - it makes me more depressed than the summer of '76 when I spent my days all alone, wandering along the beaches of San Clemente, collecting bits of washed up seaweed and wishing I had another chance at how to tackle the whole Watergate thing.

Nixon is: Revolted

I'm Sorry You're So Ungrateful

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My fellow Americans,

History is filled with instances of great men - leaders and icons - being embarrassed and torn down by the masses in some fit of petty anger and jealousy. Men like Jesus Christ and Mussolini have all had their moment of truth when they have been forced, usually on pain of harm, to face their people and issue some sort of apology.

Yesterday, General Stanley McChrystal, was publicly humiliated by the act of appearing on Afghani television to offer an apology. His trespass?  Having a few dirt-farmers as unintended casualties as a result of the battle to protect those ungrateful people from the horrors of the Taliban.

Now, I've had occasions on which I've had to swallow my bile and suffer the supreme indignity of this spectacle. In 1952 as candidate for Vice President, I had to answer the lies and slander spread about me by the subversive press. Thankfully, I was deft in my ability to deflect atttention by pointing out that Pat wore ugly coats, and that my children had grown fond of a flea-infested mongrel. Then, in 1973 I again had to stand in front of the camera to respond to yet more left-wing attacks on my character and assure the people that I was not a crook.

 Two martyrs

So believe me when I say that I have first-hand knowledge of the pain and embarrassment of this sort of ordeal. The sort of understanding only a kindred spirit in a trial by fire can have. And my heart goes out to Gen. McChrystal in his time of need.

Personally, I blame the current president. This would never have happened in my day. I would never have asked Gen. Westmoreland to apologize to the Vietnamese for soemthing like My Lai, or to have Henry stand in front of the cameras to pull on his greasy forelock because of Cambodia (though his ego could have used that kind of check). I understand and respect the uniform and the men who wear it. Besides, the president and the Generals who serve him have a hard job, and it often gets messy. Sure, there can be unhappy mistakes and our hair might get a bit mussed. But it is for the greater good.

The sooner the bleeding-heart press and un-American hippies understand that, the better it will be for the rest of us, the Great Silent Majority.

Nixon is: Angry