This post by Digby regarding Tucker Carlson (the pundit, not the aspiring ballroom dancer) got me thinking about the inherent negativity of the Republican Party. Not the actual post about Carlson per se, but specifically the nasty little conversation he engaged in with Mark Williams, a Republican/Conservative talk show host who appeared the other night on the Bow Tied One’s show, which Digby was kind enough to share with his readers. Mr. Carlson and Mr. Williams are so concerned about the chance that Al Gore might run against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, that they felt the need to share their vicious and vapid little thoughts about Mr. Gore’s chances with Tucker’s ever dwindling Cable TV audience last night:
CARLSON: Now clearly, we all agree that there is — there are things to be afraid of. We disagree about what they may be. Here’s one I think we can all agree is, frankly, a terrifying prospect. It comes from our old pal Pat Buchanan [MSNBC political analyst and former presidential candidate]. He says this about Al Gore. He proclaims that if the former vice president ran for the Democratic nomination right now, Pat Buchanan predicts, he would beat Hillary Clinton to win the nomination. Now whatever you think of Pat’s politics, he’s a pretty, I think, smart prognosticator. The idea of Al Gore, I think both of you — Mark, we’ll start with you — you agree even the Democrats don’t want that.
WILLIAMS: You know, if he does, I mean, from Pat Buchanan’s lips to God’s ear because that would be the Talk Show Host Employment Act of 2008. You know, Rush Limbaugh and I and guys like me are lighting candles every Sunday praying for just such an event. You know, the Hildebeast is just an amoral politician. Al Gore is nuts. I mean I’ve met the guy. I’ve talked with the guy. I stood 10 feet from him at a MoveOn.Org thing I crashed in D.C., watching him bellow and sweat like a racehorse on — you know, has been drugged out or something. He wasn’t, but he looked like a racehorse, his nostrils flaring. The guy’s nuts, and he’s angry. He was up there talking about how President Bush is agitating for the assassination of judges, and then he said, “If the Supreme Court doesn’t get its act together, people just may rise up against them.” I mean, the guy’s out of his mind. It would be very entertaining. I think the Hildebeast would take him down. I just wish the Republicans had somebody other than, like, [Sen.] George Allen [VA], who’s a great guy, but I wish we had a little more to choose from on the Republican side.
CARLSON: Alex Bennett [Liberal Talk Show Host and Tucker’s “balance” from the left for this segment], what do you think? And be honest, here. I know we’re on television, but tell the truth. The idea of Al Gore getting the nomination again, you don’t welcome that. You’re not a masochist, are you?
(cont.)
It really is clever of Tucker to put someone as foul and ugly as Mark Williams on his show, because it makes his criticism of Gore seem mild by comparison. After all, he’s not the one calling Gore “nuts” or a man who looked like a “racehorse” doped up on amphetamines. Nor is he the person who refers to Senator Clinton by the odious nickname “Hildebeast.” No, Tucker doesn’t say anything like that. He’s only the man who gave Williams a media platform from which to spit his brand of vile invective into thousands of homes in America.
However, even though Carlson doesn’t explicitly accept Mr. Williams’ formula of character assassination and name calling when it comes to two of the Democratic contenders for the 2008 Presidential Race, it’s clear that he shares the same opinion of Mr. Gore by the manner in which he ridicules even the mere thought experiment of Gore running again. And he is more than willing to make Gore the butt of what passes for humor in conservative circles. What’s even more interesting, though, is that this was Mr. T’s second consecutive night of holding Mr. Gore up to 50 lashes of the infamous Carlson scorn. Check out these statements from his show on September 11th:
Here’s what I don’t get. Do all the people you’re hearing in the last six months or so, saying, “You know, Al Gore was right, he would have been a great president?” Do they really mean it? And if Al Gore decided to run again, would they support him?
No, of course they wouldn’t. They’d be terrified. Nobody, especially his friends, wants to see Al Gore run for president. So let’s just stop pretending.
All this after Gore mentioned in a news conference in Australia the other day, that he hadn’t completely foreclosed the possibility of running again for President. Amazing how quickly the Wurlitzer can react to favorable news regarding prominent Democrats with the politics of personal destruction. And, of course, the Conservative Gore narrative had already been test driven many times before Mr. Carlson took it out of his garage for a spin around the block the last two evenings. Gore the crazed and maniacal Wild Man of the Far Left. Gore the liar. Gore the Stiff. Gore the Fool. Gore the Phony. So ready made, it doesn’t even require Tucker to compose an original thought with which to slander poor Al.
Which got me to thinking. Has it always been that way? Have republicans always been this nasty, this eager to take the lowest road available to them? Well, a little historical research shows that the answer is yes, at least over the last 100 years, and probably longer than that. Let’s take a gander at some of that history, shall we.
The classic example of ad hominem, take no prisoners politics from the right is, without doubt, Ann Coulter’s patron saint, Senator Joseph McCarthy, Tail Gunner Joe, the Junior Senator from Wisconsin back in the early years of the Cold War era. Who can forget the turmoil he caused in our Nation with his allegations that Communist spies controlled the State Department or had infiltrated the upper levels of the US Military. He was also well known for hurling slurs at Democrats, accusing them most infamously of “twenty years of treason” during the Roosevelt and Truman administrations:
The issue between the Republicans and Democrats is clearly drawn. It has been deliberately drawn by those who have been in charge of twenty years of treason. The hard fact is — the hard fact is that those who wear the label, those who wear the label Democrat wear it with the stain of a historic betrayal.
McCarthy was not alone among Republicans during those years in slinging charges of “communist” or “communist sympathizer” against Democratic political opponents. That era also saw the unprecedented rise of Richard Nixon from political obscurity to his selection as Eisenhower’s Vice Presidential running mate. A rise, not surprisingly, that was fueled by nasty rhetoric and charges that the opponent in his very first campaign for the House of Representatives, Democratic incumbent Jerry Voorhis was a communist sympathizer:
By 1946, Americans had begun to equate Communism with all that they hated and feared. Voorhis, a hardworking five-term Congressman, had previously been endorsed by CIO-PAC, a political labor organization suspected of Communist affiliation. He declined CIO-PAC endorsement in 1946, but Nixon accused him of ties to the group.
In the first of a series of debates between the two candidates, Voorhis denied CIO-PAC affiliation. With a dramatic flourish, Nixon produced a document showing that Voorhis had been endorsed by a related group, the National Citizens Political Action Committee. Nixon knew the difference between the two groups; most of the voters did not. And when Nixon distributed flyers distorting Voorhis’s voting record as pro-Communist, the incumbent’s fate was sealed. Using anti-Communist smear tactics, Richard Nixon had become a Congressman.
Nixon would go on to repeat these same smear tactics in his even more celebrated campaign for the US Senate against Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas. This excerpt from a review of “Tricky Dick and the Pink lady” by Greg Mitchell gives you a good idea of the type of slander Nixon employed to defeat Douglas:
[S]uggestions that Douglas was “soft on communism” ran throughout the campaign in official statements from the Nixon camp, with its publication of the infamous “pink sheet” (literally a pink sheet of paper that paired her votes with those of a left-leaning colleague in the House). In what Mitchell described as “one of the lowest blows of the entire campaign,” Nixon accused Douglas on the radio of “refusing to tell you which side she is on in this conflict” (the Korean War).
Funny how history repeats itself. Today Democrats face many of the same charges from Republicans regarding the Iraq War, only this time the ‘ism they claim Democrats actively support is “Terrorism” in place of the earlier bogeyman, Communism. You could probably drop a young Nixon into today’s world of 24/7 political theater and he would, no doubt, find a place at the forefront of Republican muck slingers.
Still, perhaps no Democrat (even Bill Clinton) ever had more barnyard fertilizer thrown in his direction by Republicans and Conservatives than Franklin Delano Roosevelt. One of the more outrageous charges leveled at FDR was that establishing a dictatorship was his ultimate, secret agenda for America. And this wasn’t a charge made by fringe right wing extremists, but was one trumpeted on the pages of the most popular and influential news magazine of its day Time Magazine, on the eve of Pearl Harbor. The title says it all:
Dictator or Democrat?
Nov. 10, 1941
Thrice a majority of the nation has voted Franklin Roosevelt the man who should be President of the U.S. But that thrice-repeated vote has not quieted the suspicions of those throughout the nation who have an uneasy feeling that Mr. Roosevelt, under cover of the emergency, is trying “to slip something over” on democracy—socialism, collectivism or regimentation. […]
[T]he fear that the President is leading the country into some kind of Socialism only time and Mr. Roosevelt himself can banish.
Remember, this was displayed prominently in the pages of the most powerful news journal of its day. And Time was not alone. Many other newspaper editorialists assailed Roosevelt on a regular basis. Indeed, it was often remarked that he was “the most hated man in America,” at least as far as Republicans were concerned. The Saturday Evening Post between 1933 and 1942 regularly ran editorials by Garet Garrett condemning Roosevelt and his policies. Former President Hoover, in his Memoirs, basically called the New Deal the program of a fascist:
“Among the early Roosevelt fascist measures was the National Industry Recovery Act (NRA) of June 16, 1933 …. [these ideas] were first suggested by Gerard Swope(of the General Electric company)… They were adopted by the United States Chamber of Commerce. During the campaign of 1932, Henry I. Harriman, president of that body, urged that I agree to support these proposals, informing me that Mr. Roosevelt had agreed to do so. I tried to show him that this stuff was sheer fascism; that it was a remaking of Mussolini’s “corporate state” and refused to agree to any of it. He informed me that in view of my attitude, the business world would support Roosevelt with money and influence. That for the most part proved true.”
Another vehement critic of FDR was demagogue and notorious anti-semite, Father Charles Coughlin, the ancestor of today’s “hate radio” jocks, whose broadcasts at their height of popularity reached 30 million people each day. He initially supported FDR, but then turned against Roosevelt and his New Deal policies, claiming the President was a socialist and a communist, and paradoxically “a tool of Wall Street” in league with Jewish conspirators, and the “world’s worst war-monger.”
So, in historical context, Tucker, Coulter, Rush, Hannity, O’Reilly, et al., are simply continuing the long tradition of Right Wing hatred for, and invective directed at, anyone and everyone associated with the Democratic Party. Democrats have been called Communists, Traitors and Fascists (and worse) long before today’s slimemeisters came on the scene by people at least as vindictive and irrational, if not more so.
There is some comfort in the thought that, while the predecessors of our modern day demagogues were able to fool large numbers of Americans for long periods of time, none were able to maintain their hold on their power and influence in the end. Perhaps that is because blind, unremitting hate, combined with greed and lust for power, is simply not a sustainable basis for any political movement. It is too bleak a vision, too consumed with itself, and too nihilistic and soul shattering a faith to endure in the hearts of most people.
The great religious movements of the world have lasted down through the millennia, because they all offer humanity a vision of hope, and of love. Hope for a future better than the past, and love for all persons no matter how weak or despised they may be. The narcissitic cult that is today’s Conservative Movement in America (for what should we call it if not a cult?) has no life affirming philosophy at its core. It has only the flame of anger and hatred to keep it alive. Such flames always burn out in the end, just as the embers of a fire grow cold.
Take heart in that.
