Right Wing Dirty Tricks

How can they smear you, let me count the ways. We have the false accusations by Andrew Breitbart against Van Jones and the highly selective and deceptively edited videos Fox and Breitbart used to attack Shirley Sherrod and Acorn. Then there was “Fast And Furious,” and the phony scandal in which Republicans accused the IRS of targeting right wing groups for harassment.

The problem is that the news media, like side show barkers, shouted out all of those accusations as if they had some merit. And the right wing was rewarded by the damage their smear campaign caused to Van Jones, Shirley Sherrod, and Acorn. But their attempts to undermine Attorney General Holder by using Fast and Furious, and their attempts to discredit the IRS fell flat in spite of or perhaps because of the zeal of Grand Inquisitor Issa. The Republicans are not getting much traction out of the phony issue of Benghazi either. Ah, but hope and scandal spring eternal. Surely something can be made out of Hillary's use of her personal e-mail account to conduct State Department business! How much classified information went to or from this unsecured account, eh?

Oh goody, goody! This could be hot stuff if someone makes the right accusations! The New York Times jumped at the bait and presented a story with a headline and innuendos that were sensational enough to draw readers but were also inaccurate. As Dylan Byers wrote in his July 24 , 2015 Politico article:

“The New York Times made small but significant changes to an exclusive report about a potential criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton's State Department email account late Thursday night, but provided no notification of or explanation for of the changes.

The paper initially reported that two inspectors general have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation 'into whether Hillary Rodham Clinton mishandled sensitive government information on a private email account she used as secretary of state.'

That clause, which cast Clinton as the target of the potential criminal probe, was later changed: the inspectors general now were asking for an inquiry 'into whether sensitive government information was mishandled in connection with the personal email account Hillary Rodham Clinton used as secretary of state.'

The Times also changed the headline of the story, from 'Criminal Inquiry Sought in Hillary Clinton’s Use of Email' to 'Criminal Inquiry Is Sought in Clinton Email Account,' reflecting a similar recasting of Clinton's possible role. The article's URL was also changed to reflect the new headline.”

This smear in addition to the absurd attempts of Grand inquisitor Gowdy to bundle the supposed e-mail scandal and the ginned up Benghazi scandal into a highly damaging Hillary scandal really made me angry. It combined with the outrageously deceptive videos used to attack Planned Parenthood (see my previous post) soon had me Googling. I wanted a catalog of false accusations and dirty tricks.

What I found was entitled “Republican Dirty Tricks.” This post, by Todd Smyth, discusses many of the right wing myths about our founding fathers, and it documents many of the dirty political tricks committed during our history. Although I do not agree with all of Mr. Smyth's conclusions, I highly recommend this blog. I really enjoyed many of the quotations and the examples he included. The quotation below is almost eerily prophetic:

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country... Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

-- Abraham Lincoln, 1864

The gilded age of outrageous corruption followed shortly thereafter, and Mr. Lincoln's warning is even more relevant today. Sadly, Corporations now own the Republican Party, far too many Democrats, and our courts.  As the dirty tricks committed by the Republicans and their attempts to assassinate the character of anyone who might oppose them indicates, the Greedy Old Plutocrats are indeed working upon the prejudices of the people!