During the Nixon administration, they called themselves "ratf**kers."

[barbaraann]

Brian Morton: 'The new thugs'
Posted on Thursday, February 17 @ 10:21:49 EST
This article has been read 2118 times. By Brian Morton, Baltimore City Paper

During the Nixon administration, they called themselves "ratfuckers." Run by Donald Segretti, they were the dirty tricksters that operated behind the scenes of the Republican Party. It was their mind-set that eventually created Watergate, as well as their downfall.

Since then, a new breed has arisen. The Reagan administration was their petri dish, the 1994 Newt Gingrich "revolution" their debutante ball. Gingrich himself provided their playbook, a 1990 memo with the Orwellian title "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control," in which he told his acolytes to portray opponents as "sick," "pathetic," "incompetent" "traitors." Setting the stage, he said in the memo to "apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals, and their party."

The coaches who run Gingrich's plays are well-known now: the late Lee Atwater and current Bush svengali Karl Rove. Atwater, known for running political campaigns designed to bring out the racist redneck vote--he helped former South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond win re-election several times--made the big time when he vowed to "make Willie Horton a household name" in the 1988 Bush-Dukakis election.

And Rove's political stunts were detailed in a lengthy November Atlantic magazine article; one anecdote recalled a 1994 Alabama judge's race in which Rove's client was behind by 304 votes in an unofficial election-day tally. A Rove staffer later told The Atlantic that, while Rove pushed for a recount, he told his staffers to "undermine the other side's support by casting them as liars, cheaters, stealers, immoral--all of that." The election came down to a fight over absentee ballots, and when the case went to court (sound familiar?), Rove's troops got the business community to take out ads in newspapers all across Alabama saying, "They steal elections they don't like." In the end, the case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court where--just like in 2000's Bush v. Gore--Rove's client came back the winner.
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http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=19945

We need to remember that Karl Rove is not an anomaly in the Republican Party, he is the archetypal operative.

[fooj]

1. I've "fondly" referred to this group of thugs as...

RATBASTARDS!!! Close enough, I guess.


peace.

[Syncronaut Seven]

2. Ratfuckers is apt, I can hear the rat now

Is it in yet?

[OneBlueSky]

3. in the current case, just plain "fuckers" would suffice . . . n/t

.