Reply #16: It does show how normalized Nixon's "ratfucking" tactics have become... [View All]

[JHB]

...among Republican/conservative activists.

Ratfucking is an American slang term for political sabotage or dirty tricks. It was first brought to public attention during the Watergate scandal investigation that during the 1972 presidential campaign the Nixon campaign committee maintained a "dirty tricks" unit focused on discrediting Nixon's strongest challengers.

According to Woodward and Bernstein, Nixon aide Dwight Chapin hired fellow USC alumnus Donald Segretti to run a campaign of dirty tricks (which Segretti dubbed "ratfucking") against the Democrats in 1972. The purpose of the operation was to create as much bitterness and disunity within the Democrat primary as possible. One notable example of Segretti's wrong-doing was a faked letter on Democratic presidential candidate Edmund Muskie's letterhead falsely alleging that U.S. Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a fellow Democrat, had had an illegitimate child with a 17-year-old.

Among the tactics were: canceling meeting-hall reservations just prior to rallies, putting out false press releases or "leaked documents" in the name of political opponents, spying on rival campaigns, putting plants into rival campaigns, purloining speeches and information, vote contracting, jamming phone lines, ordering vast quantities of food for delivery in the name of rival campaigns, hiring "rioters" and "activists, conducting deceptive or offensive get out the vote phone canvasses, push polls, and similar activities.

http://www.correntewire.com/ratfucking_a_gop_tradition

O'Keefe is a former beneficiary and employee of the Leadership Institute, which coud just as well be called "Ratfucker University". Another former employee was also recently in the news in the Citizens United case travesty:

From Hullabaloo:
Update: By digby. I want to also point out that aside from the obvious comparisons to Watergate, there is another more recent comparison that is particularly relevant today.

First, it should be noted again that the ACORN tapes were doctored. Why I'm seeing Tweety play them on a loop anyway, as he's reporting this story, I'll leave up to your imagination.

But what I find most intriguing is that a week after conservative hit man David Bossie is reanimated as a conservative hero, that the newest conservative hit man hero is caught wiretapping. Bossie, after all, came to prominence over this:

"Bossie was fired from his job as an investigator working for Representative Dan Burton (R-IN) on the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee in 1998"<9> while "investigating Clinton-Gore campaign finances."<10> According to a May 7, 1998, front-page article published by the Washington Post,<11> Bossie was fired "after overseeing the release of recordings of Hillary Rodham Clinton's phone conversations with Whitewater figure Webster L. Hubbell. The tapes were edited to create the impression that Clinton was involved in billing irregularities at the Arkansas law firm where she and Hubbell worked."<12>

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/acorn-nut-busted-by-tristero-rightwing.html

Other LI alumni are "Jeff Gannon", Grover Norquist, and Karl Rove.

Politics may be hardball, but the Republicans have institutionalized Shitball.