Salon/Conason: The vast right-wing conspiracy is back in business

[kskiska]

Those delightful people who brought you Paula Jones, Willie Horton and Whitewater are back, and this time they've got John Kerry in their sights.

As strategists in both parties gird for what all expect to be an unusually nasty presidential election, the stage has been set by the revival of a conservative crew that might be called "the usual suspects" -- including consultants Floyd Brown, Craig Shirley and David Bossie. With new Web sites and fundraising vehicles already running, these veterans of the "vast right-wing conspiracy" against the Clintons are now launching the first wave of "independent" commercial attacks on John Kerry, the Democratic nominee-to-be.

(snip)

Their scorched-earth campaign tactics were epitomized by Brown and Bossie's 1992 paperback broadside "Slick Willie: Why America Can't Trust Bill Clinton." Among the ugliest features of this little pamphlet was a chapter of unsupported and anonymous insinuations about Clinton's role in a female student's suicide. Their "investigation" was later called "an unusually brazen dirty tricks operation" in a report on "CBS Evening News." (In light of recent discussion of the president's National Guard service, the authors may now regret at least one of "Slick Willie's" chapter titles -- "Brave Men Died in Vietnam: Where Was Bill Clinton?")

Craig Shirley, who presides over a large, Virginia-based P.R. firm with his wife, Diana Banister, played a less prominent but no less toxic role during the Clinton years. Among Shirley's notable clients were Paula Jones, the Clinton sexual harassment accuser who later modeled for Penthouse; and Gary Aldrich, the retired White House FBI agent whose fabricated tales of Clinton motel trysts and pornographic West Wing Christmas trees made his book a bestseller.

Yet as Kerry has reason to know, these operatives didn't commence their unsavory careers during the Clinton era. In 1988, they made political history with their first intervention in a national campaign, the so-called Willie Horton commercial. That was the racially inflammatory ad that helped bury the presidential hopes of Democrat Michael Dukakis.

more…
http://salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/03/09/conspiracy/index.html

[David Dunham]

1. This time we have Soros and Moveon to fight back!!

[Fovea]

2. and truthout and Bushwatch

, buzzflash, TPM, and MWO.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. They have no shame. If Mother Theresa were running, they'd say that

she didn't like men and was a traitor to her class. Not to mention Mel Gibson pronouncing that she was going to hell . . .

[kskiska]

4. Hitchens

has already trashed Mother Theresa.

[Miss Authoritiva]

5. Won't get fooled again?

I'd like to think that the outrageous, reprehensible, and totally irresponsible behavior that was the "Whitewater scandal" and all its subsidiary industries couldn't occur again. But you never know.

And if the citizenry once again tolerates the virtual hijacking of the media and the political process with such obscene silliness, then we get what we deserve,