A 1955 document reveals the template for fifty years of right-wing smear and fear.

[marmar]

From OurFuture.org:


On the question of aggressive tactics
Submitted by Rick Perlstein on August 18, 2007 - 12:49pm.


Kathy G, a brand-new foul-mouthed fem-blogger on the scene (subbing for Ezra Klein), asks a question:

Why aren't Democrats doing more to aggressively discredit the Republican candidates? It's essential that we shape the negative narratives about those bozos right now, before it's too late. Yet none of the operatives on our side seem to be doing that. Why is it that the Republicans always seem to be thinking and planning at least three steps ahead of the Democrats?


This provides me a great opportunity to post something I've wanted to share for some time. Murray Chotiner is the gnarled, amoral troll who taught Richard Nixon everything he knew about running campaigns and the art of political destruction. Before going into politics, he was a lawyer specializing in representing loan sharks. Conspiracy theorists have always found it suspicious that he died in a car crash during the Watergate investigation. It's always been my conviction that progressives need not be gnarled, amoral, nor trolls in order to learn some things about how to win from people like Chotiner, things that far from compromising ethics, represent instead a belated refusal to unilaterally disarm in the face of shrewder conservative tacticians—people like Murray Chotiner; and also the man who is very much his spiritual heir, Karl Rove. Some of this stuff is just basic lessons in martial maneuver.

And even if you disagree, certainly you would agree that progressives at least need to know how the gnarled, amoral trolls think, the better to defend against the dark arts.

Well, here's a glimpse into their playbook, which hasn't really changed since 1954, when Chotiner delivered a lecture to a campaign school for Republican state chairmen. The transcript was leaked, and Russell Baker described it in the New York Times. It's a fascinating historical document, but also an uncanny invitation to deja vu—for in his words are Rovism in a nutshell. One insight: while I've heard progressives arguing that people should hold their fire with critical articles and posts on opposing candidates until the general public is paying attention to the race, his advice is precisely the opposite; he agrees with Kathy G—define your opponents before they have a chance to define themselves.

And so, after the jump: Russell Baker's article, from May 13, 1956.

CHOTINER ADVISES G.O.P. HOW TO WIN


Candidates Told to Run Down Opponents Before the Race and to Limit Issues


By Russell Baker


Special to the New York Times


WASHINGTON, May 12—The first step toward attaining public office, according to Murray Chotiner, is: Tear down your opponent before you start to run.


This was the fundamental part fo a formula for successful political campaigning that was designed by Mr. Chotiner. He was campaign manager in 1952 for Richard M. Nixon, now Vice President.


Mr. Chotiner included this idea wiht scores of other pieces of advice for the present-day Republican campaigner in a speech that he delivered to the forty-eighty state chairmen at the Republican Naitonal Committee's campaign school here last September.


The press was barred from the meeting, so that Mr. Chotiner's advice to Republican candidates has been kept secret until today.


A transcript showed that he delivered an informal but comprehensive speech of some 12,000 words that covered a wide spectrum of political techniques. Its subject matter ranged from teh use of and defense against the "smear" to the art of using pink paper to suggest that an opponent had "leftish" political opinions. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/question_aggressive_tactics?tx=3

[sam sarrha]

1. so does this mean that the McCarthy investigations was just a Democrat Defamation strategy

i always thought that from the first time i saw a news clip on the hearings

[Pyrzqxgl]

10. When Nixon first ran for the Congress in the late 40's

Voters would get anonymous phone calls telling them his opponent was a Communist.

[Peregrine Took]

2. Very interesting but I wonder why there were so many "type-o's" in the Baker

article - it was hard to read.

[sam sarrha]

3. recommend recommend recommend

[supernova]

4. K&R. That's every conservo campaign run

for the last 50 years. :crazy: They are nothing if not consistent. Perhaps we can work that to our advantage? Like the blogger, I wonder what the full transcript says. Although, perhaps we can recreate it just from our own observations.

[bobthedrummer]

5. Here's something that I came across years ago that seems to be prevalent

(historically it's conceptually part of psychological operations derived from DoD's First Earth Battalion cult)

"Reframing Perception-Space (P-space): A Quick Overview of a Unifying Concept" by Col. Michael McKim USAFR (ret)
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awc/reframing-p-space.htm

[Democrats_win]

6. Stabbed in the Back! The past and future of a right-wing myth. Harpers magazine article

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/06/0081080

Check this excellent article out that every Democrat should read. It describes the history since WW2 of the Republican use of the accusation that Dems stabbed America in the back. The article says that this technique was used by Nazi Germany in accusing the Jews of stabbing Germany in the back during WW1.

It also adds an ironic note of how W bush visited "New Europe" and actually denounced his own nation (while visiting the "halls of Eastern European palaces") to "appease his hosts into torturning secret prisoners."

[grasswire]

7. thanks for that -- very interesting

Don't know how I missed it.

[ladym55]

11. Thanks for posting the article

The sad thing is that I can hear my own father's voice--FDR sold us out at Yalta--We should have never stopped MacArthur---we weren't "allowed" to win Vietnam---those right wing myths are powerful and have been woven into the fabric of our political discourse for a long time.

[yurbud]

8. oddly, with exception of Clinton in 1992, Democrats are flat-footed on answering attacks

this guy says a critical element is slamming opponent for even bringing it up, and even when Dems answer an attack, they often leave out this key piece.

[autorank]

9. K*R How revolting.

I've always wondered where the right wing talking heads go to school to learn to talk over and
be rude on talk shows. Some communications student should do a study. It's quite consistent.

What a find this is. It's still the same isn't it. We need to fire back with a consistent truth:
the Republican party wouldn't get more than 20% in any election if they didn't lie their tails off!

[pingzing58]

12. Knowledge is power. The more people know the more we are free to choose what is right and just.

[bobthedrummer]

13. .

[Felix Mala]

14. Only Nixon could go to China...

Because only Nixon didn't have someone like Nixon running to all the papers and TV shows complaining that such gestures showed weakness against the Commie threat...