Cutthroats by Digby - Worth reading even if it is about Kerry

[emulatorloo]

w thanks and apologies to Mass

Really more about Rove and his attacks on Kerry. But what I really like about it is digby's characterization of "Projection Politics," where Rove et al takes the worst of his candidate and projects it on the opposing candidate. Something that was very clear to me in 04, but difficult for me to articulate as well as digby.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_02_19_digbysblog_archive.html#114055971426709850

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Cutthroats

by digby


Both Kos and Atrios linked to this post about how Rove smeared John Kerry fior allegedly being in cahoots with Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohammed. It was bullshit, of course, and now we find out that Rove's buddy Abramoff was selling Bush face time and cut a deal for a meeting with Mahathir for 1.2 mil. (And to think the Republicans had coronaries about those silly "white house coffees.")

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Update: When I went to put up the links, I realized that Atrios had written "Always project. Always." it reminded me of a post I did before the election called "Projection Politics" in which I noted that Rove doesn't actually attack the strengths of his opponents, as he like to say he does:

Rove has developed a campaign of projection in which he tars his opponents with his own candidates' weaknesses and then attacks them.

He attacks Kerry for phony heroism thirty years ago when just last year his own candidate had himself filmed in a little costume prancing around on an aircraft carrier pretending he'd won a war that had only begun. But, by tarring Kerry with using war as a PR stunt for his own personal gain, people can process the uncomfortable feelings they are experiencing about Iraq as not really being caused by Junior, but by his rival who is the real shallow opportunist who only pretends to be a man of proven leadership and experience.

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[ginnyinWI]

1. so, in other words

He takes what his candidate is guilty of being, and accuses the opponent as having that quality. I have often thought, when hearing some label attached to Kerry--"but that is exactly what * does!!"

By accusing the other person of something, it implies that you, yourself do not have that fault. Far from it!!

edit: example #1-- accusations of being a waffler or flip-flopper.

[emulatorloo]

2. whatever they accuse Dems of, they are guilty of themselves

is how I always put it -- which isn't a very elegant way to put it.

The most obvious aggravating one in 2004, to me, was this one:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-08-11-cheney_x.htm

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Cheney says Kerry lacks convictions about right and wrong

JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) — Vice President Dick Cheney said Wednesday that Democratic Sen. John Kerry lacks "deeply held convictions about right and wrong" as he argued that voters would make a grave mistake if they replaced the current commander in chief.

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One that is resonating now of course was Zell Miller claiming Kerry wouldn't arm our soldiers properly & would outsource our national security.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54597-2004Sep1.html

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On a day when the official theme was economic opportunity, Sen. Zell Miller (Ga.), the keynote speaker, made no mention of the economy. Instead, he delivered a derisive indictment of the Democratic presidential nominee, saying Kerry would arm the military with "spitballs" and "outsource our national security" to Paris. Miller, a disaffected Democrat, said that Kerry's words "encourage our enemies" and that Democratic leaders are "motivated more by partisan politics than by national security."

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[TayTay]

3. I remember this from the MaDem Con last year

This was discussed in the forum about values. This gentleman spoke about being Sen. Kerry's Jewish Outreach Director in South Florida:

Charles Glick is principal of Charles Group Consulting (CGC), a government and issues management firm he founded in October 2001. CGC is an outgrowth of his nearly eight years of work as the director of government affairs for the JCRC in Boston, with which he retains a working relationship as their chief lobbyist and government affairs consultant. In the Fall of 2004, Charles served as John Kerry's director of Jewish outreach in South Florida-helping to win a larger percentage of the Jewish vote for Democrats than the national average. He holds a master's degree in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government and a master’s in Jewish Communal Service from Brandeis University.

He showed us the brochures and stuff that Digby mentioned in his post on his blog. It was awful. This was part of a much braoder strategy to 'take' Jewish voters away from the Democratic Party as a whole. (As I have mentioned before, there is also an effort to take Catholic voters away, an effort that has really borne fruit for the Rethugs. They get the parishioner roles from several friendly Catholic Churches and call the membership. Sigh!)

Those borchures were ugly and this was a real war between the two sides in Florida. It was nasty.

[ginnyinWI]

4. so did it work?

I've forgotten--did Kerry get the majority of the Jewish and Catholic votes anyway? I keep hoping that people are smarter than these political operatives think. These tactics will stop if only they decide that they don't work.

On the other hand--this stuff has been going on since almost day one in this country. I'm reading McCullough's bio on John Adams now, and here are some of the things each side called the other during the Adams v. Jefferson presidential campaign of 1800:
"repulsive pedant"
"gross hypocrite"
"strange compound of ignorance and ferocity, of deceit and weakness
"hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman"
"tempest of malignant passions"
"a man devoid of every moral principle, a bastard...a foreigner"
"actually insane"
"a godless man who mocks the Christan faith"
"family Bibles will have to be hidden away for safekeeping if he is elected."
"a monarchist"
"old, addled and toothless"
"has a secret arrangement to throw the election so that he could serve as vice president"
"a howling atheist"
"a shameless southern libertine"
"a vain Yankee scold"
"quite mad"

Jefferson, a slave-owning Virginian aristocrat, painted himself as a "man of the people" while calling Adams, a farmer's son from Massachusetts, an aristocrat who would enslave the common people if he could.

So this is an old, old story! :eyes:

[kerrygoddess]

5. Dr Ron posted about this too.

Glad to see Digby, Atrios and Kos picked it up.
http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=2015

[Noisy Democrat]

6. The other thing they do

is attack Democrats for their strengths. Kerry's tall, handsome, and athletic, so they spread the "Lurch" meme to predispose people to perceive him as ungainly, awkward and ugly. He does sports like kiteboarding, which require great coordination and many hours of practice to master, so they painted that as foolish, elitist play. He's steadfast in his positions, so they got the flip-flop thing going. And he's far better equipped to handle complex situations and to grapple with the messiness of reality than Bush, so they painted that as indecisiveness or neurosis (e.g. the Bush strategist who talked about how JK accurately described his eye color as sometimes grey, sometimes blue; this GOPer said that this was a sign that even on the simplest questions, Kerry is incapable of giving a straight answer). Some of this also fit in with projecting Bush's weaknesses onto Kerry, but it was also a strategy of going directly for the positives and turning them into negatives, or trying to.