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« February 20, 2005 - February 26, 2005 | Main | March 6, 2005 - March 12, 2005 »
Things you will not read about on my blog, ever:
The Washington Post had a story today about Tom DeLay's attempt to regain the confidence of his constituents in the face of the numerous corruption and abuse of power allegations, not to mention that unfortunate little trial going on right now. Much has been written in blogtopia about it, mostly on the real chance Dems have to make him nervous in '06. Read Off the Kuff, the Daily DeLay, DeLayWatch, and Bull Moose.
While that is the main thrust of the story, there is another angle worth exploring as well. As part of his effort to shore up support in his home district:
In January, DeLay shook up his team of political consultants. He signed on Sam Dawson, who was a top political aide to then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and helped devise the Republican strategy for taking over the House in 1994. Dawson will serve as his general consultant and media strategist.
Who is this Dawson fellow? Thought you'd never ask. The short answer is that he is a longtime GOP operative, a South Carolinian and former associate of Lee Atwater. He has about 30 years of campaign experience, including Bush-Quayle in '92, Buddy Roemer in Louisiana, Coverdell in Georgia, and an extended stint with the NRCC in the '80s under Ed Rollins and again in the late '90s. Lately he's had a media consulting firm, among other things doing ads for Republican House candidates.
The long answer is a bit more sordid. See, this Dawson fellow has a history of playing as down and dirty as necessary to win a race, as an associate of Atwater and Rollins would. In fact, the Atlanta Constitution back in the day called him "Atwater's leanest and meanest disciple." To be called the meanest is surely saying something. Some Republicans disagree -- after all, Dawson has worked for moderates as well as conservatives. Still, in one failed Ohio race, he was brought in to pull a moderate candidate to the right in order to win the GOP primary.
The campaign he ran that everyone still talks about, however, was a 1978 race for a South Carolina House seat. (If you'd like to consult the sources, the stories I drew most of this from are in Vanity Fair, Nov. 2004, and the NYT, Sept. 24, 1986.) Carroll Campbell (the R) was going up against Max Heller, the mayor of Greenville and a Jewish refugee from Nazi-era Austria. The Campbell campaign ran a push poll asking voters which of six characteristics best described the two candidates:
Another question asked whether fifteen "personal qualities" would best describe the two candidates, including "native of South Carolina" and "Jewish immigrant."
The push poll, quite possibly the first of its kind, had its intended effect as a whisper campaign began to spread about Heller. That, of course, was by design. Dem Alan Baron wrote in a newsletter a few years afterward that, based on conversations with Campbell's pollster, the intent was to "determine the impact on voters of information that Heller was (1) a Jew; (2) a foreign-born Jew; and (3) a foreign-born Jew who did not believe in Jesus Christ as the savior." Apparently #1 and #2 were OK with South Carolina voters, but #3 was not. And so the Campbell campaign went after Heller.
Apparently the push poll was not enough, however, and notably Campbell never mentioned his opponent's religion directly. A week before the election, Heller was up by 14 points. Then, a third fringe candidate named Don Sprouse entered the race who did put Judaism front and center. Heller, Sprouse said, wasn't qualified to be in Congress because "he doesn't believe in Jesus Christ."
Why would Sprouse enter the race then, and choose that particular line of attack? After all, the push poll's results were not public knowledge at that point. While Campbell and Atwater denied any role, using a third candidate as a stalking horse to make the dirtiest accusations was a strategy Atwater used that very same year to reelect Strom Thurmond. The most direct evidence of a link between Sprouse and the Campbell campaign comes from a parking lot meeting between Dawson and the Campbell campaign's new best friend, a meeting Atwater disclosed to several people after the fact.
The anti-Semitic attacks and innuendo were effective, and Heller lost to Campbell by six points. Sprouse's vote was negligible, but he raised the issue of religion so that Campbell himself wouldn't have to.
Dawson may have cleaned up his act some since then -- I won't claim that every race he's managed has been so utterly soiled by bigotry and manipulation -- but it did set a template by which later dirty campaigns were run, including Bush's campaign of innuendo against McCain in the 2000 South Carolina primary.
As I said, Tom DeLay sure knows how to pick his friends. As though he needed any help playing dirty.
The Washington Post -- finally! -- does a story taking apart one of Bush's privatization pitches, that his plan is modeled on the successful Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) used by millions of federal workers.
Except it's not. Modeled on it, that is. You'll already be familiar with some of the arguments in the story (you read it here), but I think this passage captures the spirit nicely:
For most federal employees, the TSP serves as one leg of a "three-legged stool" of retirement income; the other two are the traditional Social Security benefit and a government pension. But because many businesses no longer offer defined-benefit pensions, many employees in the private sector have only a two-legged stool -- their 401(k) plan plus Social Security.
The money that workers divert to Bush's personal accounts, plus 3 percent interest, would come out of their guaranteed Social Security benefit. So, in effect, the president would be shaving down one of the legs and hoping that a new one -- the individual account -- would grow at least enough to compensate for the loss.
"It's not really like TSP at all," said James Sauber, chairman of the Employee Thrift Advisory Council, a 15-member panel of representatives from federal labor and managerial organizations. "He's proposing to weaken one leg of the stool to fund another leg of the stool."
We know the trouble Bush has run into with Social Security privatization, and I just wrote about the obstacles "Clear Skies" faces. Now time to remind you of another of his domestic priorities which shows every sign of stalling before it gets anywhere. Yes, it's civil service reform again.
A couple weeks ago I wrote about the skepticism greeting the scheme from senators, including Republicans with responsibility for shepherding it through the process. (Yes, Voinovich is causing trouble again.) Now CongressDaily says Tom Davis is also putting the brakes on in the House. His northern Virginia district has about 50,000 federal employees, making any support for the president on this issue rather uncomfortable.
If the Senate does block the proposal, then Davis is off the hook with the administration. If by some chance it moves, then he will have to make a choice between his constituents and the White House. My guess is Bush will be the one left wanting. Either way, expanded civil service reform looks to be dead in the water, which is a good thing, at least in the form Bush wanted it. At the very least, the longer Davis flirts with the idea the greater the opening for Dems to challenge him in '06.
Hmm, this whole second term agenda thing doesn't seem to be going very well for Bush, does it?
Last Wednesday the LA Times published a letter to the editor from Paul Oakley, exec dir of the Coalition for Affordable and Reliable Energy, a coalition of manufacturers, coal producers and their allies that strongly supports Bush's "Clear Skies Initiative." Putting his best face on a political problem, he said that Inhofe had postponed a markup of the bill until this coming Wednesday to find an agreement on "workable, bipartisan multi-emissions reduction legislation."
In a sense, he's right. The reason the bill was pulled from the committee's agenda just prior to the February break was that it was deadlocked 9 to 9, with all Democrats together with Jeffords and Chafee opposed. The opponents have shown little indication of folding, even in the face of Inhofe's intimidation tactics. It's not that Republicans want to find a bipartisan solution, it's that they need to. If anything, the only bipartisan coalition is the one blocking the bill.
Inhofe also faces dissent within his own ranks, CongressDaily reminds us today (subscription only). Voinovich, who chairs the subcommittee with jurisdiction over the bill, wants to find a bipartisan compromise. That's something for which Inhofe has shown little taste.
Perhaps you have read a blog with comments inundated with spam from online casinos. Perhaps a favorite blog has had to shut down, temporarily or permanently, due to thousands of spam comments and referrals. Perhaps you are a blogger wrestling with the problem every day.
I thankfully have had to do very little of that -- as far as I can tell, Typepad has effectively filtered out the spam -- but the problem affects all of us directly or indirectly.
Netaloid has done a masterful job, and a service to us all, researching not just the origin of the online casino spam, but also the tools for us to fight back. If you are a blogger beset by such spam, go sign his online petition. Believe it or not, we in blogtopia have some political leverage over the spammers. Use it!
Here are the relevant links over at Netaloid:
