and KKKarl Rove is still leading the republican party around from behind the scenes.

The republican party, of course, is not short of scumbag material.

He was the one who brought down Jim Wright as the Speaker of the House, destroying all civility between the two parties. He drove Bob Michel into retirement to satisfy his own ambition, making sure that there would be no cordiality between the two party leaders.

his despicable actions started way back before he took a bath and put on a suit.

Among other things, he required GOP members to use words from his list in describing any Democrat or Democratic policy. Every time you hear anyone in the GOP use the word "Pathetic", it came from his list. Also, words like "bizarre", "corrupt", "failure", "incompetent", and even "liberal".

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4443.htm

Language: A Key Mechanism of Control

Newt Gingrich's 1996 GOPAC memo

As you know, one of the key points in the GOPAC tapes is that "language matters." In the video "We are a Majority," Language is listed as a key mechanism of control used by a majority party, along with Agenda, Rules, Attitude and Learning. As the tapes have been used in training sessions across the country and mailed to candidates we have heard a plaintive plea: "I wish I could speak like Newt."

That takes years of practice. But, we believe that you could have a significant impact on your campaign and the way you communicate if we help a little. That is why we have created this list of words and phrases.

This list is prepared so that you might have a directory of words to use in writing literature and mail, in preparing speeches, and in producing electronic media. The words and phrases are powerful. Read them. Memorize as many as possible. And remember that like any tool, these words will not help if they are not used.

While the list could be the size of the latest "College Edition" dictionary, we have attempted to keep it small enough to be readily useful yet large enough to be broadly functional. The list is divided into two sections: Optimistic Positive Governing words and phrases to help describe your vision for the future of your community (your message) and Contrasting words to help you clearly define the policies and record of your opponent and the Democratic party.

Please let us know if you have any other suggestions or additions. We would also like to know how you use the list. Call us at GOPAC or write with your suggestions and comments. We may include them in the next tape mailing so that others can benefit from your knowledge and experience.

Your theory stands to reason

I do get your point; good one.

I wish him an early, slow, painful death! Damn these Rethugs are making me nasty too! Damn them...he's ruining my character!

I'd make it LONG, slow, miserable, and painful. Otherwise, spot on!



Bake

... traces directly back to Gingrich. He truly is gutter garbage.

Nah, I don't wish death on anyone. But grave-pissing I can be down with.

Dogs soon follow suit in kind of a fecal game of tag.

You seem to be generating and encouraging some hatred as well.

Newt's not responsible for it all. Falwell was distributing tapes about Clinton's murders. Matthews was there with Flowers on his show, talking about Clinton murders. Paul Harvey was there, pushing for Clinton impeachment, and proclaiming the end of America when Clinton was not convicted. Columnists like Joseph Perkins, Cal Thomas, and George Will stirring up hatred for the other side. There was Rush Limbaugh and other radio hosts.

No, it was not all Newt, and we on the left, particularly with the internet have been all in about returning hatred for hatred.

We didn't start the fire, but we are carrying flame throwers looking to scorch somebody, somebody who is one of THEM - a bigot, a racist, homophobe, sexist piece of excrement.

Thumbs down on that "left is just as bad as the right" bullshit. We don't kill cats or step on right-wingers' heads.

Is "I despised him then" somehow not an expression of hatred?

It is not unreasonable to despise someone who has gone out of their way to ruin the world you live in just because it suits their ego and they can. Newt Gingrich is an awful person. He is worthy of a bit of hatred.

What if the facts are that somebody blew up my house when my wife and baby daughter were in it? Could I hate then?

By which I mean, SHOULD I hate then?

Martin did not think so. On January 30th, 1956 Martin Luther King was at a meeting for the Montgomery Bus Boycott. As he relates is starting on page 135 of Stride Toward Freedom, he was told by Ralph Abernathy.

"'Your house has been bombed.'

I asked if my wife and baby were all right.

They said, 'We are checking on that now.'"

He continues on page 139

"I could feel the anger rising when I realized that my wife and baby could have been killed. I thought about the city commissioners and all the statements that they had made about me and the Negro generally. I was once more on the verge of corroding hatred. And once more I caught myself and said: 'You must not allow yourself to become bitter.'"


Of course, now we on the left, some of us, perhaps most of us, honor MLK with our lips, but are ignorant of his teachings, or flat out reject them. Martin writes on page 103

"A fifth point concerning nonviolent resistance is that it avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. THe nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent be he also refuses to hate him. At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love. The nonviolent resister would contend that in the struggle for human dignity, the oppressed people of the world must not succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter or indulging in hate campaigns. To retaliate in kind would do nothing but intensify the existence of hate in the universe. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can only be done by projecting the ethic of love to the center of our lives."

"outside" the political process and could be disavowed.

Newt was at the center of it all in Congress and was the one corrupting the actual political process.

part of that chorus of voices saying "the other side is evil".

Mose so I would think, as Gingrich had and controlled one of the bully pulpits.

Stinky. thanks for the reminder.

Prior to Nixon, when an election was over, it was over until the next campaign season.

and the idea that campaigns "ended" before Nixon is laughable beyond description.

Should no credit for the lowering of collegiality, or at least should no credit for the lowering of collegiality between elected members of the politicial parties, be given to Nixon?

From you experience of being a history fan, for the time periods prior to Nixon after Presidents were elected and campaign seasons ended, do you have any examples of where the the lack of collegiality between elected politicians continued on a wholesale basis after a Presidential election was over? Do you have one example?

Can you point to events following LBJ's election and prior to the following campaign season in which there was an absence of collegiality between elected members of the two politicial parties?

Or to events following JFK's election and prior to the following campaign season?

Or Eisenhower's? Or Truman's? Or FDR's?

For those who lived during the times of FDR's, Truman's, Eisenhower's, JFK's, and LBJ's Administrations, they know that the level of animosity between elected officials during the times between campaign seasons did not exist during those time periods. The atmosphere was entirely different that what it is at the present time.

And your response, which seems to be less than collegial, is: "That's a load of hogwash." and "... the idea that campaigns "ended" before Nixon is laughable beyond description."?

So, instead of choosing to have either a collegial discussion or at least a neutral one, you chose those words.

One of the best things that Skinner ever did for this site was to add the "ignore" feature. I'm going to choose to use it right now. Good luck to you.

mine owner's association for his helping labor while he was in office 5 YEARS after he left office. It was a message.

Elections are mere annoyances to the wealthy and greedy.

I think Nixon arrived in an era when idealism and television perhaps made it look different, but I think there are too many instances in history where, if one were alive during those times and in a position to find out what went on behind the scenes, much more than it does today, I think, they would realize that an election was just the beginning of the next round, not the end of a fight.

Aside from being the catalyst of division, the man is totally sick in the head and needs help.

the average repug out there. It's pretty sick to see what is going on in the KKKparty.

And he sounds like the ideal Republican candidate for today's conservatives.

and we should all hate and revile that one man who did so much damage to our democracy.

Gingrich was the first actual Republican to make me aware of the hateful element of the GOP's schtick, circa his mid-'90s comments about how single, working and/or low-income mothers who 'couldn't take care of their kids without government support' should have their children relegated to orphanages. I was 15 at the time. Never forgot his ugly insults.

Rove is a dirty trickster, not a bomb-thrower. Gingrich is the first to actively cultivate the snarling right attack mode and then unleash it.

of his decomposing corpse.

Thanks for the thread, Stinky the Clown.

Gingrich stands out in a very contemptible crowd.

...which drove things to the worse.

Newt is one, Rush is another.

Nixon's dirty tricks were not just mistakes. They were intentional ploys to try to prevent the majority -- the Democrats from winning elections that Democrats should have won.

Karl Rove was quite the master of dirty tricks way back when he was in the Young Republicans.

Since his formative political years when he tried to paint World War II B-24 pilot and hero George McGovern as a left-wing peacenik through his mid-level career as a planter of disinformation in the media on behalf of Texas and national GOP candidates to his current role as Dubya’s “Svengali,” Rove has practiced the same style of slash and burn politics as did his Nixonian mentor Segretti. Many of us remember the Lincolnesque Senator Ed Muskie breaking down in tears during the 1972 campaign over Segretti-planted false stories in a New Hampshire newspaper that accused Mrs. Muskie of being a heavy smoker, drinker, and cusser and accused Muskie of uttering a slur in describing New Hampshire’s French Canadian population. Rove’s hero also forged letters on fake Muskie campaign letterhead, disrupted rallies and fundraising dinners, and spread false stories about the sex lives of candidates. Segretti’s brush also smeared George McGovern, George Wallace, Shirley Chisholm, and McGovern’s first vice presidential choice, Senator Tom Eagleton. Segretti of course did not go on to a high-level White House job — he was sentenced to six months in federal prison for distributing illegal campaign material.

In many respects, however, the apprentice Rove has far exceeded the chicanery and evil-mindedness of his mentor Segretti. Rove is a tech-savvy puppet master for Bush. Take, for example, last June’s discovery of a “lost” CD-ROM in Lafayette Park across from the White House. Contained on the CD was a PowerPoint presentation given by White House political director Ken Mehlman to Rove on the strategy for next Tuesday’s off-year election. The slide show showed First Brother Jeb Bush being vulnerable in Florida. Jeb Bush later joked that the disc was part of a plot cooked up by him and his brother to make it appear that he was vulnerable in order to rally an otherwise complacent GOP base in the Sunshine State. Or was it a joke? Jeb Bush and his political minions like Katherine Harris have shown us that if anyone thinks what the GOP has done in Florida is funny they have an incredibly sick sense of humor.

Rove’s own tendency to be sick-minded originates with his mentor Segretti. The 2000 GOP primary was a chance for Rove to hone his skills in dirty tricks. His target then was Senator John McCain who appeared to be within striking distance of Dubya in South Carolina after the then-GOP maverick’s surprise upset victory in New Hampshire. Rove’s operation proceeded to target McCain with false stories: McCain was a stoolie for his captors in the Hanoi Hilton (this from a lunatic self-promoting Vietnam “veteran”); McCain fathered a black daughter out of wedlock (a despicable reference to McCain’s adopted Bangladeshi daughter); Cindy McCain’s drug “abuse”; and even McCain’s “homosexuality.” In the spirit of Segretti, Rove engineered a victory for Dubya but at the cost of trashing an honorable man and his family. Muskie, McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Hart, Tsongas, Clinton, Biden, Dole, Perot, and others had all seen the Segretti/Rove slash and burn tactics before.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2002/11/01/exposing-karl-rove/

Of course, the distrust may date back to the McCarthy era and then to the assassination of --- let's see, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy and John F. Kennedy. That there were so many assassinations of liberal leaders -- and always by rogue assassins acting on their own of course, is quite amazing.

And then there is the strange coincidence that so many plane crashes kill Democrats. It's not that Republicans never have accidents, but the number of accidents affecting Democratic politicians seems out of proportion. Dirty tricks?

We Democrats have reason to distrust Republicans.

I wonder how comparable they are, in fact. Charles Colson. Karl Rove.

it never was "with" anything worthwhile.

Cheers,
Agony

he recruited fellow sociopaths from around the country, groomed, trained and financed them and they won! Folks like Scarborough, Santorum, and many others.

Part of his training was that scandalous, toxic, memo outlining "positive" and "negative" words to be used in their communications.

Newt Gingrich's 1996 GOPAC memo: Language: A Key Mechanism of Control
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4443.htm

He lays it on the line for those selfish, stupid shits that we all
know live all around us.