Karl and Joe, Sittin' in a Tree, L - i - e -- i - n - g

I like to think I pick my blog posts like I pick my battles; gut shots. The kind that rip, shred and bloody; kill shots.

Karl Rove is one of my targets. My past posts about him drip with vitriol. He is my personal anti-christ. The Main Event. Without him, the whole Republican Neocon movement shrivels to the size of his dried black heart. So of course though I find this rather late-to-the-McCarthy-comparing-game column by E. J. Dionne low in timeliness, it is still gratifying.

Near the column's middle he makes some salient points that it takes nothing more than a scan of the last few years of Republican tactics to see are quite accurate. First, there is the Republican willingness to divide the country and destroy democracy to get power and keep it:

"The McCarthyites' real enemies were not communists but the New Deal liberals who had dominated U.S. politics for 20 years. The McCarthy crowd was willing to divide the nation at a time of grave international peril if that's what it took to beat the liberals."

Big -snip-

Then, after Rove derisively compares liberals to therapists Dionne writes:

...Rove knows how to play this game. The only evidence he adduces for his therapy charge is a petition in which the current executive director of MoveOn.org called for "moderation and restraint" in the wake of Sept. 11. Rove then slides smoothly from the attack on MoveOn to attacks on Michael Moore and Howard Dean. Finally, Rove tosses in an assault on Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) for his statement that an FBI report on the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, might remind Americans of the practices of Nazi and communist dictatorships.

In the ensuing controversy, Rove's defenders cleverly sought to pretend that there was nothing partisan about Rove's speech. "Karl didn't say 'the Democratic Party,' " insisted Ken Mehlman, the Republican national chairman. "He said 'liberals.' " It must have been purely accidental that one of the "liberals" mentioned was the Democratic national chairman and another was the Senate Democratic whip. It must also have been accidental that both of them, like most other liberals, supported the war in Afghanistan, not therapy. At the time, Durbin called the war "essential."

-snip-
And,

That's how guilt by association works. Make a charge and then -- once your attack is out there -- pretend that your words have been misinterpreted. Split your opponents. Put them on the defensive. Force them to say things like: "No, we're not soft on terrorism," or, "I'm not that kind of liberal." Once this happens, the attacker has already won.

And the most important evidence of Rove's malevolence, which was the above Big snip out of the middle:

Here are the key passages: "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers. In the wake of 9/11, conservatives believed it was time to unleash the might and power of the United States military against the Taliban; in the wake of 9/11, liberals believed it was time to submit a petition. . . . Conservatives saw what happened to us on 9/11 and said: 'We will defeat our enemies.' Liberals saw what happened to us and said: 'We must understand our enemies.'"

That reiteration of 9/11--how many times?--at least four in only three sentences?--is a tactic that comes directly from the Frank Luntz Republican 2006 election strategy playbook.

In his foreward alone Luntz writes: "George W. Bush won because 9/11 had truly changed Anerica and because he accurately reflected America's resolve that the War on Terror has to be won. Not waged. Won. Voters concluded that while John Kerry could adequately manage a terroroist attack, it was President Bush who was more likely to prevent one," and "The events and aftermath of 9/11 may not have changed everything, but it certainly changed the outcome of the 2004 presidential race."

Karl must have decided that given the Iraq quagmire and Republican inability to beat back the truth about Iraq overall, if he wanted the job of keeping Bush's approval rating afloat done right, he would have to do it himself. After all Bush's rating affects House and Senate ability to control government and get elections in 2006. So he used 9/11, the ONLY event with enough broad-based emotional charge (i.e. fear) to cut through increasingly accurate and relentless liberal fire. And he linked it to liberals through distortions while linking Republican actions (equally distorted to the positive) to the party and by association, Bush.

Look at this and learn two things: the only correct response to the charges in his speech completely sidestep his liberal namecalling. Instead ask why, in the months preceeding 9/11, the Bush Vulcans were ignoring the briefings that practically begged their attention to this matter. And in every case when Republicans attack liberals go to the matter they are avoiding and drive their lack of accountability on it home.

And read the Luntz 2006 playbook! I know it's lengthy and not the whole gameplan but once you've absorbed it you can clearly understand the overall strategy they are using and so more easily answer Republican attacks on any subject.

The Repugs are in trouble and Rove's appearance is a sure sign. And remember this little tidbit from a Google searched piece about Joe McCarthy:

Once he was known from coast to coast as an enemy to Communism, money started pouring in. Some people sent him ones and fives, and some sent as much as $7,000 or even $10,000. To every donor, he sent a letter thanking the person for the donation and asking for more money to keep up "the hard and costly struggle against Communism." As it turns out, the fight against Communism was quite inexpensive, and most of the money went into his bank account and then into soybean futures or horse race bets. If anyone had dared to investigate this fishy situation, Joe's national prominence might have been ended. However, at that time, you were as good as Red if you attacked his reputation.

Today, most of us look at McCarthyism in a negative way, but in a nationwide poll, a full fifty percent approved of McCarthy and his methods, with twenty-one percent undecided. It is quite scary that half the American population approved of his tactics, when it was obvious that there were serious flaws in his methods. This poll shows that either a large portion of people in the 50's were quite gullible, or that Joe was an excellent demagogue. Both are probably true.

[UPDATE 6-29-05]

Don't lose sight of Rove's explicit liberal+"therapy" attack choice. Much of today's therapy successes have arisen from liberal and humanistic roots. Therapy--a course of action people take to overcome pathological self-destructive belief systems one can otherwise not overcome--is the chosen course for many to rational free thinking. By linking liberals to therapy he is attacking rationality, intentionality and free-thinking. He is suggesting liberals are weak and that therapy is a choice of the weak-willed.

Those with mental disease and therapy both fight terrible bias even in today's modern culture.

Attacks on therapy by control-addicts who think their pathology is rugged individualism (of the type that brings you corporal punishment of children, spousal abuse and invitational rape i.e. 'she asked for it', as well as religious extremism) comprise the winger portion of the Bush base.