dirty tricks

Rush Limbaugh And The Right: Still Cheerfully Unethical After All These Years

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

OperationChaosII

Yesterday, the grand Pooh-Bah of conservative talk radio chirpily announced that he might “have another installment of Operation Chaos before the Democrat primaries are all said and done.”  If your brain cells have lived that long, you may recall Operation Chaos I, when in March of 2008 Rush directed his zombie followers to vote in Democratic primaries for Hillary Clinton, who was then, as now, sliding fast. The idea was to stop  Barack Obama from clinching Democratic nomination early, and to maximize the chance of a messy Democratic nominating convention. Rush claims that his dastardly plan “worked”: Clinton won the Ohio and Texas primaries with large pluralities from rural, as in conservative counties, presumably full of Ditto-heads. On the other hand, Obama still won the nomination easily, then the election, and the United States was stuck with an incompetent, arrogant leader for eight years.

If that’s what Rush calls a successful plot, I hope we never see one of his unsuccessful ones.

But here he is again, considering the same tactic, though this time the idea is to have conservatives vote for an incompetent socialist, Bernie Sanders, whom none of them would even consider voting for in a real election even if someone was pulling their fingernails out with pliers. This is, as before, unethical in many ways, and it is particularly revolting to read the likes of Instapundit and Newsbusters cheering Rush on. “At the very least this could help make the Democrat primaries more fun to watch as they stretch on and on and….. ” smirks P.J. Gladney, at the latter.

Conservatives are nomore ethical than progressives, it’s just that their lack of ethics expresses itself in different ways.

Operation Chaos and its threatened sequel could only be devised by someone who thought Richard Nixon’s dirty tricks (which included the treasonous dirty trick of sabotaging LBJ’s Viet Nam War peace talks) were a scream, and could only be applauded by conservatives whose love for democracy just applied when it favors them. Rush’s steaming pile of depraved Machiavellianism is not worth my composing a new brief against it: I did a good job the first time. Here, in part, is what I wrote about Operation Chaos, while gagging in disgust, in 2008. It still stands. I’ll just substitute Bernie for Hillary. I don’t have to change anything else except a verb and pronoun here and there: Continue reading →

JEB! Cheater! Unethical! DISQUALIFIED

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments
The plant, overacting...

The plant, overacting…

Donald Trump was speaking  at a Jon Huntsman / The Hill “No Labels” event, a female audience member later identified as Lauren Batchelder posed as a feminist Trump antagonist. You can see the exchange in the video below…

But she was not a typical audience member; she is a paid staffer of a  GOP Senator and a volunteer for the Jeb Bush campaign, as a recent tweet demonstrated.

NH 6

The news media, looking desperately for someone to embarrass Trump, began framing the narrative an a pro-choice audience member who “Trumped Trump.”

A little research, however, showed that Lauren Batchelder is a current staffer for pro-life Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH),  and is currently also working in New Hampshire as a volunteer for the Jeb Bush campiagn.  In other words, she was a plant, she was misrepresenting herself, and this was a contrived cheat to mislead the American people while undermining Trump for the benefit of Jeb Bush.  Batchelder, like any good conspirator, tried to cover up,  deleting her tracks on social media.   The Last Refuge, however, preserved some:

[LinkedIn Profile HERE] [Twitter HERE] [Instagram HERE] [ FaceBook HERE]

The Bush fallback position, not surprisingly, is that she was a rogue staffer, acting on her own. The campaign’s words, however, were more focused on changing the subject. Allie Brandenburger, a spokeswoman for Bush’s campaign, said Batchelder is not a paid staff member ( OK, she’s a volunteer, a distinction without a difference) and attended the convention on her own (or so he claimed), but then immediately tried to change the subject, saying  in an e-mail,  “We can’t help but notice Mr. Trump does seem to be very sensitive about being challenged by women.”

Yes, we understand; That’s why you set this up. This was obviously a talking point, since Tim Miller, Bush’s spokesman, tweeted nearly the exact same thing, saying, “For what its worth, Lauren is not a Jeb staffer but the Jeb staff is amused by how sensitive Donald is to being challenged by women.”

Funny, I’m not amused. At best, Bush, Ayotte and the Republican establishment failed to properly train and supervise a staffer and volunteer sufficiently. More likely, she was given signals, like the IRS was in its illegal sabotage of Tea Party groups, that encouraged her to engage in unethical conduct. Most likely, it was a Nixonian dirty trick by a desperate, flailing, failing candidate. Unless Bush can prove that it was a case of negligent management on his part, and that proof cannot consist of Batchelder falling on her sword, and apologize appropriately to Trump and the public, then we must assume that the worst explanation is the right one.

As before, I consider making Donald Trump appear to be a victim an irresponsible  and incompetent act. As of now, I consider Jeb Bush to be desperate, untrustworthy, and foolish. He has no credibility as a leader, a campaigner, or a potential President.

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Sources: Washington Post,  Last Refuge

Senator McCaskill, A Cheater And Proud Of It

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments
Inexplicably, Richard Nixon never wrote an article boasting about how his campaign forged an attack letter that tricked Edmund Muskie into an emotional meltdown that let George McGovern get the 1972 Democratic nomination.

Inexplicably, Richard Nixon never wrote an article boasting about how his campaign forged an attack letter that tricked Edmund Muskie into an emotional meltdown that let George McGovern get the 1972 Democratic nomination. Strange…

What is increasingly disturbing is that so many of our representatives and high elected officials appear to have no idea what ethical conduct is. This leads them, as Donald Trump did in the Republican candidates debate, to boast about their unethical conduct in public and assume that the public, as well as the news media, will nod approvingly. It is more than disturbing that they are usually correct, and thus are both exploiting the nation’s ethics rot and contributing to it as leaders are uniquely able to do.

This was what the leader of Senate Democrats, Harry Reid did when he expressed no remorse for lying about Mitt Romney during the 2012 campaign (“Romney lost, didn’t he?”). Now, in a signed article in Politico, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) has explained how she gained re-election by manipulating the democratic process in Missouri. Obviously, she sees nothing the matter with what she did: the article is essentially one long gloat.

With it, she marks herself as a cheat, a fick, and an ethics corrupter, as well as a disgrace.

But she’s a winner, so it’s all good!

In the essay called “How I Helped Todd Akin Win — So I Could Beat Him Later,” McCaskill explains how, after her campaign identified Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin as the weakest Republican candidate to run against her, it ran cognitive dissonance ads engineered to increase his support among the most ignorant and extreme Republican primary voters. She writes,

So how could we maneuver Akin into the GOP driver’s seat? Using the guidance of my campaign staff and consultants, we came up with the idea for a “dog whistle” ad, a message that was pitched in such a way that it would be heard only by a certain group of people. I told my team we needed to put Akin’s uber-conservative bona fides in an ad—and then, using reverse psychology, tell voters not to vote for him. And we needed to run the hell out of that ad….Four weeks out we would begin with a television ad boosting Akin…then we’d go back into the field and test to see if it was working. If it was, we’d dump in more “McCaskill for Senate” money, and we’d add radio and more TV in St. Louis and Kansas City. ..As it turned out, we spent more money for Todd Akin in the last two weeks of the primary than he spent on his whole primary campaign..

Let me explain this so even the most hopeless “the ends justify the means” partisan can understand it. The idea behind democracy is to have the best possible candidates run for office, and to give the public good choices rather than lousy ones. Each party has an obligation to run a fair competition to find the candidate it believes is 1) best qualified for the office and 2) most able to prevail in the election. It is not fair, ethical or legitimate politics for the opposing party to interfere with this process to ensure weaker competition. This is not fair to the public, which has a right to have a good choice, not a horrible one. It is also undemocratic. It is wrong, no matter how clever it is. Continue reading →

The Republican Pattern Of Deceitful Tactics: Can This Party Be Trusted? No.

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

cdn-media.nationaljournal.com

I owe an apology to Michael Steele, the ethically clueless, dim-bulb predecessor to Reince Priebus as Chairman of the Republican National Committee. Still nauseous from Steele’s despicable 2010 fake census mailing fundraising scam, I referred to Priebus era deceptions like employing misleading editing of excerpts from Solicitor General Donald Verrilli’s defense of the Affordable Care Act before the Supreme Court, and sending out solicitations for donations that look like overdue bill notices as examples of “the Curse of Michael Steele.”  I’m beginning to think, however, that Steele wasn’t the problem, and that it was he who was infected by the unethical instincts of the GOP, rather than the other way around.

The Tampa Bay Times recently reported on the experience of citizen Ray Bellamy, who wanted to make a political contribution to Alex Sink, a Democrat running for Congress in Florida.  A Google located “http://contribute.sinkforcongress2014.com,” and sure enough, there was a large photo of Sink and the trappings of a campaign site. Assuming he was at the correct destination and without reading the text, Bellamy clicked on a button at the bottom of the page, sending $250 to Sink’s campaign, or so he thought. But the button was under the words, “Make a contribution today to help defeat Alex Sink and candidates like her,” which Bellamy also didn’t read. He felt he had been tricked. He had. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: “Meg Lanker-Simons is Innocent” Facebook Page

/ Jack Marshall / 108 Comments

“Meg Lanker-Simons is innocent we believe what she did was justified and deserves not to be held accountable for her accusations we stand behind you sister.”

—-The Facebook page dedicated to the plight of University of Wyoming student, progressive blogger and campus radio host Meg Lanker-Simons, who apparently sent an obscene and threatening message to herself online under the guise of an anonymous male conservative, one of her sworn foes. She has been charged with a misdemeanor by campus police.*

I confess, there were more flattering photos of Meg I could use, but she doesn't deserve them. What she deserves, really, would be for me to dress up in drag, take my own photo, and not only label it as meg, but then riff on how ugly she is in the picture, when it's really me. Meg would approve of that. She'd have to.

I confess, there were more flattering photos of Meg I could use, but she doesn’t deserve to have me use them. What she deserves, really, would be for me to dress up in drag, blacken my teeth and take my own photo, and then not only label it as Meg, but then riff on how ugly she is in the picture, when it’s really me. Meg would approve of that. She’d have to.

Let us stipulate that the title of the Facebook page may well be correct, as James Taranto persuasively argues: threatening yourself, even with rape, which is what Lanker-Simons did, is unlikely to be anything but protected speech.

Beyond that, however, this kind of stunt is low-wattage Tawana Brawleyism,  and thus ethically revolting. That 38 Facebook fans and the semi-literate clod who authored the quote above argue that it is “justified” shows that ethics rot has some new and virulent strains.

Continue reading →

Funny! But Wrong: The Democratic National Committee’s Fake Romney Site

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Unethical.

Don’t tell me I have no sense of humor. I get it, and it’s clever. Kind of fun, too. But just because a form of dirty campaigning is funny doesn’t change the basic principles it violates. Putting out a fake version of a political opponent’s supporter, poster, flyer, campaign material, web address, Twitter feed or website in order to trick people into either believing that the opposition campaign’s campaign or candidate is saying or doing something they are not really saying or doing for any purpose, including satire, crosses ethical lines into unethical campaign tactics territory. In a word, it’s cheating. It is unfair, deceptive and dishonest, but mostly, it is irresponsible, because it opens the door to far worse things, like sending obnoxious plants carrying racist signs to the other party’s rallies, robocalls making outrageous statements on behalf of the opposition, or putting the Obamaphone lady in fake Obama ads.

It has been a despicable campaign, and this Democratic National Committee fake Romney website not only makes it worse, it creates a slippery slope that leads right to the sewer.

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Pointer: Althouse

Stephen Colbert’s Comedy Terrorism

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

This was a lesson for me. I fell into the trap of looking past unique unethical conduct because it resembled harmless conduct I had seen many times before, a close cousin of using “everybody does it” to excuse and invalidate the inexcusable. Thank goodness Washington Post columnist Colbert King was paying attention.

In King’s column today, he catalogues the activities of Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert’s faux presidential run. I had already commented on Colbert’s gag earlier this week, but the target of my criticism was George Stephanopoulos, who devoted a ridiculous amount of time to a pointless interview with the comedian at the expense of real news. I assumed Colbert was just another in a long line of comedians who have used a presidential election year as a prop, and thus harmless….and I stopped paying attention to his antics. But as King ( his first name is pronounced KOHL-bert; the comedian’s name is Kohl-BARE) points out, Colbert has moved beyond satire into something akin to comedy terrorism, actively attempting to warp and influence the presidential selection process for laughs, and casualties be damned. King writes: Continue reading →

Unethical Website: NewtGingrich.com…But Not In The Way You Think

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Ah, Dick, what might have been! If only your burglars had broken into Gingrich headquarters!

The pro-Democratic super PAC “American Bridge” bought the domain name http://www.NewtGingrich.com and now uses it to redirect anyone who reaches the site to various Web sites that highlight the ex-Speaker’s many failings, perceived flaws, or the attacks of critics. Among the places it hijacks users to are Freddie Mac’s Web site (a reference to Newt’s high-paid duty as “a historian”), Tiffany’s (where Newt infamously had a rather large bill, as if that has any significance whatsoever except to class-bashers), information about Greek cruises ( as Newt abandoned his campaign earlier this year for a cruise, while his staff labored away), or to the ad Gingrich filmed  with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in favor of addressing climate change (because being open-minded about climate change isn’t permitted in the GOP).

The Washington Post termed the stunt “clever.” Well, I no longer expect the Post to know the difference between bad ethics and applesauce. Of course the website trick is unethical, deceiving web users and misappropriating a domain that Gingrich himself, and only Gingrich, should be able to employ. Yes, it’s legal. It is still unfair, deceptive and dishonest—wrong. When Richard Nixon’s gang used dirty tricks to upset Democratic rivals in 1968, the Post condemned the conduct as proof of “Tricky Dick’s” willingness to distort the democratic process and win by schemes rather than merit. When a Democratic group uses dirty tricks on a Republican presidential candidate, however, it’s “clever.”

The Post, as well as many of the commenters on its reporting on the faux Gingrich website, embraces the concept of ethics that holds that harmful acts performed against someone it likes is unethical, while the same act taken against someone it opposes is ethical.

There is a word for this delusion.

It’s called bias.

Donna Brazile Opens An Ethics Can Of Worms On “The Good Wife”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Is this the real Donna Brazile or the fake one?

The increasingly common practice of using real political figures playing themselves in dramas made me queasy from the beginning, and now I know why.

“The Good Wife,” CBS’s excellent legal drama now highlighting that network’s Sunday nights, has made such blurring of the real and fictional something of a trademark, featuring such real-life political power-player as Fred Thompson and Vernon Jordan in past episodes, not merely in cameos, but participating in substantive scenes as their real-life selves. Last night, Democratic Party strategist Donna Brazile, who had earlier in the day participated in Christiane Amanpour’s roundtable on ABC, played herself in the episode’s fictional meeting between her and  Eli Gold (Alan Cumming), the ethics-free campaign manager for the Good Wife’s Creepy Husband, Peter Florrick (Chris Noth). I must say, Donna Brazile made an extremely convincing Donna Brazile. She has a future in acting, as long as she can play herself. The problem is what fictional Donna Brazile told fictional Eli Gold, and the immediate, and confusing real life ethical issues it raises. Continue reading →

The Obama Speech Flap: Case Study in Liberal Media Bias Attempted and Abandoned

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

This time even the Washington Post couldn't hide it.

Why does the mainstream media continue to do this? Why does it try to make fair analysis look like right wing bias by refusing to admit the obvious?

I am genuinely perplexed.

I wrote about the President’s petty and inept effort to upstage the GOP presidential debates earlier than most. concluding that 1) it was intentional, 2) it showed, as usual, awful leadership instincts; 3) it would make the likelihood of Republican cooperation in essential policy initiatives worse, not better, and finally, 4) that the White House, once it was blocked by Speaker Boehner, was lying when it claimed that the conflict was accidental.

This was not some calculated ideological spin; I don’t do that.  I may be full of baloney sometimes, but I don’t do that. My analysis was based on conventional and scholarly knowledge of what constitutes leadership, fairness, and professionalism. But the President’s media cheering section, which has mastered the art of making objective criticism seem like “conservative attacks”, once again attempted to misrepresent the story to suit the kind of political agenda objective journalists are ethically bound to avoid.

Here’s the Washington Post in its early edition yesterday: Continue reading →