The Politics of Personal Destruction
 
 
Some Examples of How They Do It

 
Whisper Campaigns
Article in "The Nation" alleges Republican Karl Rove SOP (Standard Operating Practice)
"This Is Exactly How Karl Rove Works" by George Zornick, May 13, 2014

Online Example of a Whisper Campaign

Scroll To Example of Whisper Campaign

 
Smear Campaigns
Wiki Leaks Exposes Democratic Smear Campaign Against Jeff Sessions
 by David Cameron Smith on Scribd

Online Example of a Smear Campaign

Scroll To Example of Smear Campaign

 
Whisper Campaign Example
This is an article from "The Nation"
titled "This Is Exactly How Karl Rove Works" by George Zornick, May 13, 2014 
If you consumed any political news at all Tuesday,
you likely know that Karl Rove, former political guru for George W. Bush,
reportedly suggested during a conference last week
that Hillary Clinton suffered a “traumatic brain injury” recently.

Rove quickly denied the charge, and told The Washington Post later in the day
that “of course she doesn’t have brain damage.”

But the idea that the former first lady and possible future presidential candidate
is brain damaged is already all over the media.
Elsewhere in the Post, one can find over a thousand words
from the ever-credulous Chris Cillizza on the subject of Clinton’s health,
pivoting off Rove’s remarks.
(Cillizza isn’t entirely sure if Rove’s bizarre charge is wrong:
he actually begins a sentence “Putting aside the ‘brain damage’ debate,
which seems like a bit of a red herring….”)

You could believe Rove’s denial 
— but you would have to ignore virtually his entire political career.
For decades Rove has been circulating nasty, personal rumors about political opponents
and placing them in the public conversation, all while obscuring his fingerprints,
making the rumors become the opponent’s problem, not his.
It’s page one of his playbook.

Take for example the tale of Mark Kennedy,
a Democratic candidate for Alabama Supreme Court in 1994,
as recounted in James Moore and Wayne Slater’s book on Rove, The Architect.
Rove was working for Harold See,
Republican and law school professor backed by the Business Council of Alabama.

Kennedy was “not your typical Alabama macho,
beer-drinkin’, tobacco-chewin’, pickup-drivin’ kind of guy.
He is a small, well-groomed, well-educated family man,” Moore and Slater noted.
A central feature of Kennedy’s campaign ads
was the private nonprofit he founded for abused and neglected children.

That seems like an entirely benign, harmless résumé point to offer
— but as Moore and Slater note,
Kennedy “had never been in an election against Karl Rove.”
This is what began to happen:

“[W]ord began to spread along the loose network
of University of Alabama Law School faculty and students that Kennedy was a pedophile.
The whisper campaign moved with a kind of ruthless efficiency
from the hallways of the law school to folks back home,
to big cities and small Alabama communities, everywhere students lived.
[Kennedy’s campaign manager] said he heard about the whisper campaign
directly from friends inside the law school, and as he studied polling data,
he saw that it was working. But what to do about it?”

Kennedy couldn’t exactly call a press conference and announce he wasn’t a pedophile,
as the authors note. He managed to win the election, but narrowly,
and did not seek re-election.*

Rove is a master at forcing his adversaries to address vicious personal rumors
that were never true in the first place.
I could go on and on, but a brief highlight reel:

During the 2000 presidential contest, when Rove was working for Bush,
the campaign “featured a widely disseminated rumor that John McCain,
tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, had betrayed his country under interrogation
and been rendered mentally unfit for office.”

When Bush was running against Ann Richards for governor of Texas in 1994,
a persistent rumor circulated that Richards was a lesbian,
helped in no small part by a push poll asking voters
if they would be “more or less likely to vote for Governor Richards
if [they] knew her staff is dominated by lesbians.”
In fact, a regional Bush campaign chairman was quoted criticizing Richards
for “appointing avowed homosexual activists” to state jobs.

Sometimes Rove doesn’t even restrict this tactic to political campaigns
— he uses it for himself. Josh Green in The Atlantic in 2004:
“In 1986 [John] Weaver and Rove both worked on Bill Clements’s successful campaign
for governor, after which Weaver was named
executive director of the state Republican Party.
Both were emerging as leading consultants,
but Weaver’s star seemed to be rising faster.
The details vary slightly according to which insider tells the story,
but the main point is always the same:
after Weaver went into business for himself and lured away one of Rove’s top employees,
Rove spread a rumor that Weaver had made a pass at a young man
at a state Republican function.
Weaver won’t reply to the smear,
but those close to him told me of their outrage at the nearly two-decades-old lie.
Weaver was first made unwelcome in some Texas Republican circles,
and eventually, following McCain’s 2000 campaign,
he left the Republican Party altogether.”

Many of these techniques actually come from Lee Atwater, who tutored Rove.
“A supposed slip of the tongue that in fact gets some truly nasty tidbit on the record
— that tactic is straight from the Atwater manual,” The New York Times noted in 2008.
And the strategy has been reworked and refined by Rove in the ensuing years.
(Note the echoes between his ageist attack on McCain’s mental health,
and Tuesday’s broadside on Clinton’s brain.)

It’s only a matter of time until some reporter asks Clinton
if she’s really suffered brain damage,
and her response will revive the story once again,
leaving legions of voters
wondering if there really is something to all this brain damage talk.
Rove knew exactly what he was doing by invoking that specter
and then walking away innocently, twiddling his thumbs.
It’s the same thing he’s always done.

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Wikileaks Exposes
Democratic smear campaign
against Jeff Sessions

It's easy to spot a political hit job when you know what to look for.
The telltale signs might include a steady trickle of negative information,
an echo chamber focusing on the same story at the same time,
or even a seemingly coordinated move from one "breaking" story to the next.
Those of us who pay attention to politics have seen it whether we know it or not.
 
The most effective smear includes a smattering of facts,
spotty allegations, and doctored quotes that fit a predetermined narrative.
The "breaking" story usually comes from the biggest sympathetic media outlet
that won't ask too many questions.
The hook doesn't have to prove anything;
it just needs to be salacious enough to gain traction.
The narrative carries with
other reporters and media types politically interested in affirming it.
If successful, the story makes its way
to our social media feeds and water cooler conversations.

This isn't anything new.
Conducting opposition research and "defining" opponents
is as much a part of American politics as shaking hands and kissing babies.

But we don't usually get to see a smear campaign's blueprint.
WikiLeaks recently exposed the Democratic plan to attack Jeff Sessions,
and most people missed it. 
Several months ago, the Democratic political machine
saw the Alabama Senator as a "Tier 1" vice presidential candidate
and prepared the hit job.
To their credit, they didn't take Sessions lightly.

Now that Sessions is Trump's nominee for Attorney General,
Democrats have a pre-prepared document to damage him.
It's an identity politics play
that says as much about what Democrats think of Americans
as how they feel towards Jeff Sessions.

According to the document,
Latinos won't like Jeff Sessions because they value the Golden Rule
more than U.S. immigration law.
Democratic operatives assume African Americans care too much about food stamps
and high levels of welfare spending to support him.
Through the Democratic lens, America's
youth should fear Jeff Sessions because he isn't a fan of marijuana,
subsidized student loans, and increased government gun control.
Democrats even planned to
undermine Sessions with the middle class
by appealing to the average American's love of government programs,
corporate bailouts, and the Affordable Care Act.

The smears basically amount to stretching a few old accusations
and emphasizing the fact that Jeff Sessions isn't a liberal.
The clearly partisan narrative uses

cherry picked articles, allegations, and repetition
to weave a story designed to affirm the biases of lazy reporters and leftist politicos 
--not exactly Sessions's biggest fans.
Confirmation hearings shouldn't be a cakewalk.
Democrats will ask Sessions for his legal thoughts on 
president-elect Donald Trump's constitutionally suspect comments over the last year.
He'll be questioned about enforcing the Supreme Court's recent decision
in Obergefell v. Hodges in light of his perspectives on same-sex marriage.
Many of his Senate colleagues will pepper him on his approach to
issues like state marijuana and immigration policies
essentially ignored by recent attorneys general.  
That's all fair game, but
don't expect to see a civil discussion hashing out differences in approaches to law enforcement.
Democrats might not be able to derail Sessions's confirmation,

but they'll absolutely try damage public confidence in Sessions through the process.
They won't deviate much from the attacks they've already prepared
because Democrats appear
more interested in political character assassination than an even handed vetting.
President Obama's attorneys general have used the office as a policy-making entity.
Americans who share that activist perspective towards law enforcement
won't be comforted by Sessions simply repeating his intention to uphold federal law.
That schism marks the greatest philosophical difference between the current Department of Justice
and the direction Sessions would likely take it.
Policy-making is the province of Congress.
Our elected officials ought to do their job
rather than having the nation's top attorney do it for them.
As we near Sessions's confirmation hearing,
expect the pre-packaged Democratic headlines to increase.

At least this time, you can follow along with "Jeff Sessions Top Hits"
and won't have to wonder where they're coming from.

Cameron Smith is a regular columnist for AL.com
and state programs director for
the R Street Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C.
He worked for Senator Jeff Sessions on the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

 DNC's Jeff Sessions Top Hits 5.20.16 from WikiLeaks
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