The Coldest Democratic Attack Ad Never Made (Yet)

So I have been thinking this over ever since I saw the Lee Atwater special, "Boogey Man" (watch) on PBS a few days after the election. It just hit me how all of the bull that they were throwing at President Barack Obama this year was actually repackaged Lee Atwater smears. So earlier this month when Jed Lewison had a post up on dailykos about the John Ziegler guy on FoxNews claiming that believing Barack Obama is a muslim is "rational" I decided to post a comment about an ad I would like for him to make before the next election cycle which could compare and contrast the tactics that Lee Atwater used back in the 80s and how those same tactics are used today almost in cookie cutter fashion. Well honestly my comment didn't get all that much attention (2 recommends) and that was cool because it is really just a pipe dream of mine even though I do think it would be effective to show some people who truly believe that they are getting the truth from the Republican party and FixedNews just how bad they are getting played by 20+ year old tactics. Well I was pretty meh about my comment dying a miserable death until I saw this. Now I am expanding my appeal to anybody who knows how to do this kind of work. I definitely think it would be worth it.

In the weeks days Saxby Chambliss won reelection in one of the reddest states in the country, Georgia, the Republican rhetoric has been especially overheated. He did win so I guess they are due a little bit of gloating and since I am the number one shit talker when we win I was willing to brush it off and not get offended. But more and more there was this crecendo of conservative talking heads that were claiming all sorts of things that Chambliss' victory supposedly meant to the rest of America. Somehow a guy running for reelection in a state that went to John McCain but a pretty large margin a month ago now signals to the other countries that he did win in that Obama doesn't have a mandate after all. And of course the post election day "Center Right" meme was thrown around. But this evening I read a Wall Street Journal op ed that tried to say that Chambliss' victory can be used to rewrite history.

Democrats will fall short of a 60-seat Senate super majority in the 111th Congress. Unofficial results, with 97% of precincts reporting, show Sen. Saxby Chambliss with a wide lead over challenger Jim Martin, 57.4% to 42.6%, in Georgia's runoff election. Chambliss's victory assures the GOP of at least 41 Senate seats. It also lays to rest one of the nastiest McCarthyite smears of recent times: the repeated assertion by Democrats and the media that former senator Max Cleland's patriotism is in question.

Cleland was seeking a second term in 2002 when Chambliss ran against him. Chambliss criticized Cleland's voting record--specifically, his repeated votes against the legislation that created the Department of Homeland Security. Cleland and fellow Democrats objected to provisions in the law that gave the new department more flexibility vis-à-vis union work rules. Chambliss accused Cleland of cravenly pandering to special interests.

Now anybody who did see the Chambliss ad can attest to the bolded section being total bullshit. That ad was meant to convince the average worker that Max Cleland did not support George Bush's efforts to protect America and with out any doubt called in to question Cleland's patriotism. And to think than ANYBODY is trying to use a runoff election victory to try to wipe the slate clean is just reprehensible if you ask me. But in watching the Lee Atwater special this really shouldn't have been much of a surprise. In fact evidently the last time the Republicans have had a new thoughts on campaigning was when Lee Atwater was running George H. W. Bush presidential campaign in 1988. Well without further ado, here is the description of the ad I would love to see somebody, anybody make and promote before 2010 rolls around. If nothing else it will strip the GOP of over half of their usual attacks rendering them pretty much helpless. James Taranto, this is for you buddy!


I don't know exactly how many people got to watch the Lee Atwater special, but I did and it became crystal clear to me that there is nothing new under the sun. While we all thought that the dirty tricks of this campaign season were the dirtiest ever and don't get me wrong they were bad, they were all recycled Lee Atwater tactics. I would like to suggest an "ad" so to speak that can be run in every future campaign season. The ad would compare some of the things said this campaign season to some of the stuff said by Lee Atwater back in the day. Here are some clips I would recommend be included in the ad:

1)There was a story about Lee Atwater using a man's Jewish faith against him. Evidently Lee Atwater paid some buffoon to be a third party candidate so that he could act like a holy roller and keep pointing out that the Democratic candidate did not believe in Jesus. Of course they never mentioned that it was because he was Jewish. And of course it worked and there is footage of low information voters rejecting the Democratic candidate just because he isn't a Christian almost as if they thought that made him an atheist. And its directly analagous to this Obama is a muslim. So you could splice it with FoxNews "breaking" the false story about Obama having attended a madrassa. Of course you could always use the Liddy Dole "Godless" ad as well. Either one to me would be effective.

2)I don't know if how many of the younger folks remember when Atwater ran Bush 41's campaign but they used a lot of the same tactics against Mike Dukakis as McCain used against Obama. Every time Bush 41 and his campaign openly tried to denigrate Dukakis' patriotism they came out with this statement "I'm not questioning his patriotism, Im questioning his judgement" Sound familiar? So perhaps you could splice Bush 41 on one side of the vid giving that statement and have John McCain on the other side saying the same thing.

3)Remember the now infamous Saxby Chambliss ad against Max Cleland which scrolled through all of the votes that supposedly Cleland had voted against trying to protect America when in reality they were votes against union busting? Thats the same exact way Lee Atwater ran an ad against Dukakis with false votes that never took place saying Dukakis didn't want to protect America.

4)Who could forget the Willie Horton ad? And you can use ANY "Democrats are soft on crime" ad to run in conjuction with the Willie Horton ad. Of course you could add in the caveat that Dukakis' jail furlough program actually was emulating a program that Ronald Reaganinstituted in California as Governer but nobody ever brought it up

5)And there is a quote from Atwater himself about Dukakis being an elitist and "eating quiche out of the can" and of course you could cut to the many times that FoxNews talked about Obama's arugula comment or any Repubican flack that tried to label Obama an elitist.

6)There are some really good clips about how Lee Atwater used the pro life people even though he thought they were stupid and crazy just because he knew abortion was a wedge issue. So you could use those quotes and contrast it with the same Pro Life rhetoric coming from we see to this day from say Sarah Palin.

7)There also might be a way to remind people of the fact that Lee Atwater was the person who is credited with inventing the push poll and then contrast that with the push polls and robo calls used this year.

The reason why I would like to see an ad like that done is so that some of the every day Americans who have been voting Republican based on fear can see that they have been getting fooled by the same bullshit for over 20 years now. The Republicans don't even try to come up with something new or something that would apply to the particular Democrat they are facing. Its all cookie cutter because it still works at least in some places like Georgia.

I could throw in there that before McCain was ever smeared about having a black child with a stripper in South Carolina, the very same smear was used by Atwater against Bill Clinton when he was still Governer of Arkansas because Atwater knew that Clinton was likely going to be running against Bush 41 in 1992.(I know some people will assume its true since Clinton has a problem keeping his hands and other parts to himself but that particular time it was in fact a smear) But that would be piling on I suppose


For anybody who hasn't seen the Atwater special I encourage you to do so because it shows you exactly what we will be up against again in 2010. A good way to look at it as though we just stole the opposition's playbook and now we just have to think of how to maximize that knowledge. One thing is for sure, not a whole lot will change inside the GOP between now and then.