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I believe that although this is rather lengthy, its importance in understanding the history of Republican politics warrents its posting. The Republicans that came afrter Atwater have used the same tactics to win elections.
It is taken primarily from Wikapedia:
Harvey LeRoy "Lee" Atwater (February 27, 1951 – March 29, 1991) was an American political consultant and strategist to the Republican party. He was an advisor of U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and Chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Atwater rose during the 1970s and the 1980 election in the South Carolina Republican party, working on the campaigns of Governor Carroll Campbell and Senator Strom Thurmond. During his years in South Carolina, Atwater became well known for running hard edged campaigns based on emotional wedge issues.
Atwater's aggressive tactics were first demonstrated during the 1980 congressional campaigns. He was a campaign consultant to Republican incumbent Floyd Spence in his campaign for Congress against Democratic nominee Tom Turnipseed. Atwater's tactics in that campaign included push polling in the form of fake surveys by "independent pollsters" to inform white suburbanites that Turnipseed was a member of the NAACP. He also sent out last-minute letters from Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) telling voters that Turnipseed would disarm America and turn it over to liberals and Communists. At a press briefing, Atwater planted a "reporter" who rose and said, "We understand Turnipseed has had psychotic treatment." Atwater later told the reporters off the record that Turnipseed "got hooked up to jumper cables" - a reference to electroconvulsive therapy that Turnipseed underwent as a teenager.
I could only think of Bush’s planting of the phony reporter at his Washington briefings.
"Lee seemed to delight in making fun of a suicidal 16-year-old who was treated for depression with electroshock treatments", Turnipseed recalled. "In fact, my struggle with depression as a student was no secret. I had talked about it in a widely covered news conference as early as 1977, when I was in the South Carolina State Senate.
After the 1980 election Atwater went to Washington and became an aide in the Ronald Reagan administration, working under political director Ed Rollins. In 1984, Rollins managed Reagan's re-election campaign, and Atwater became the campaign's deputy director and political director. Rollins tells several Atwater stories in his 1996 book, Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms. He states that Atwater ran a dirty tricks operation against vice-presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro including publicizing the fact that Ferraro's parents had been indicted of numbers running in the 1940s. Rollins also described Atwater as "ruthless", "Ollie North in civilian clothes", and someone who "just had to drive in one more stake".
During his years in Washington, Atwater became aligned with Vice President Bush, who chose Atwater to run his 1988 presidential campaign.
On Reagan’ racist Southern Strategy he was interviewed during the campaign in which he revealed the strategy of the use of code words that have been employed by every Republican candidate since Reagan:
Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?
Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff.
His dirty tricks were much approved of by H. W. Bush who welcomed him to run his campaign against Dukakis.
The Horton campaign undoubtedly helped George H.W. Bush overcome Dukakis's 17-percent lead in early public opinion polls and win both the electoral and popular vote by landslide margins. Although Atwater clearly approved of the use of the Willie Horton issue, the Bush campaign never ran any commercial with Horton's picture, instead running a similar but generic ad. This was the same tactic later used in the Swift Boat slander against Kerry.
During the election, a number of allegations were made in the media about Dukakis's personal life, including the unsubstantiated claim that Dukakis's wife Kitty had burned an American flag to protest the Vietnam War, and that Dukakis himself had been treated for a mental illness. In the film Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, Robert Novak reveals for the first time that Atwater personally called him to spread these mental health rumors. Again the same tactic was used by Cheney by getting Novak to out the CIA agent
Plame to discredit her husband.
After the election, Atwater was named chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Shortly after Atwater took over the RNC, Jim Wright was forced to resign as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and was succeeded by Tom Foley. On the day Foley officially became speaker, the RNC began circulating a memo to Republican Congressmen and state party chairmen called "Tom Foley: Out of the Liberal Closet." The memo compared Foley's voting record with that of openly gay Congressman Barney Frank, with a subtle implication that Foley was himself gay. It had been crafted by RNC communications director Mark Goodin and House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich. In fact, Gingrich had been trying to get several reporters to print it. The memo was harshly condemned on both sides of the aisle. It was so outlandish that even Republican Senate leader Bob Dole criticize it. He said in a speech on the Senate floor, "This is not politics. This is garbage."
On March 5, 1990, Lee Atwater collapsed during a fundraising breakfast on behalf of Senator Phil Gramm.<12> Doctors searching for an explanation to what was initially thought to be a mere fainting episode discovered a grade 3 astrocytoma, an unusually aggressive form of brain cancer, in his right parietal lobe. He ended up paralized on one side and in a wheel chair.
In the months after the severity of his illness became apparent, Atwater said he had converted to Catholicism and, in an act of repentance, Atwater issued a number of public and written letters to individuals to whom he had been opposed during his political career.
In a letter to Tom Turnipseed dated June 28, 1990, he wrote, "It is very important to me that I let you know that out of everything that has happened in my career, one of the low points remains the so-called 'jumper cable' episode," adding, "my illness has taught me something about the nature of humanity, love, brotherhood and relationships that I never understood, and probably never would have. So, from that standpoint, there is some truth and good in everything."
In a February 1991 article for Life magazine, Atwater wrote:
My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The '80s were about acquiring — acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.
It was only after he had been diagnosed with a fatal diseased that he “got religion.” For me that was far too late to expect any measure of forgiveness from the people that he destroyed. He was nothing more than a ruthless bastard who ushered in a the Republican Strategy that was embraced by every Republican candidate dating from the defeat of Dukakis by spreading out right lies.
When I heard of his illness and phony turn of heart, I couldn’t help from thinking maybe there is some measure of justice after all.
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