DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA Neo-cons aiming swift boats at Hillary
By Bill Berkowitz
OAKLAND, California - While Democratic candidates are battling it out for their
party's 2008 US presidential nomination, conservative partisans have been
gearing up to take down the front-runner, Senator Hillary Clinton.
In the 2004 presidential campaign, the term "swiftboating" came to describe the
mendacious, tenacious and well-funded effort aimed at destroying the reputation
of the Democratic Party's
standard bearer, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. Himself a US Navy swift-boat
commander in the Vietnam War, Kerry was ostensibly targeted by a group called
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
This time around, "Hillary hunting" describes the Republican Party's crusade.
"Although swiftboating is reprehensible, like most well planned, funded and
executed attacks, it works very well," said John Stauber, author and founder of
the Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy. "It took Kerry's strength -
his military record and Purple Hearts - and stuffed them down his throat.
Swiftboating was the single most successful tactic used to defeat Kerry, and
we're going to see much more of it in the months ahead."
While "Hillary hunting" or "swiftboating" have existed in one form or another
for decades, this election cycle's rendering may be a tad more sophisticated
and much more media-savvy.
Earlier in the decade, in attempts to prevent Clinton from becoming a senator
from New York, direct mail campaigns were launched, faxes were blasted, e-mail
alerts were issued, and websites were built. Books were written and strategies
developed, and revised.
While these efforts failed to forestall her election and subsequent re-election
to the US Senate, they succeeded in raising substantial amount of money for
right-wing organizations, and in raising questions among voters about her
character - as well as drumming up her negative ratings.
Failed efforts to derail her in 2000 led to longtime Republican Party political
consultant Arthur Finkelstein's launch of "Stop Her Now" in February 2005. Head
of the conservative political consulting firm Arthur J Finkelstein &
Associates, he aimed to raise US$10 million with "Stop Her Now" and defeat her
in her re-election bid.
"Stop Her Now" failed to stop her then.
Even though the first presidential primaries are still months away, some
Republican Party officials, and their surrogates, have determined that Clinton
will win the nomination, and they have begun sprucing up old anti-Hillary
websites and launching new campaigns.
"Hillary Clinton, like her husband, is a tough-as-nails campaigner who has been
through the right-wing attack wringer," Stauber pointed out. "While many polls
show her as the Democrat front-runner, they also show high negatives for her
that will be easy for Republicans to exploit, and it's clear that they are
already beginning to do so.
"Any Democratic candidate is going to be attacked by well-funded,
well-coordinated Republican groups. Although these swiftboaters will try to
appear independent and grassroots-oriented, they are fronts for well-funded
special interests and campaign consultants who try to stay behind the scenes.
While she is very vulnerable to smears, it's also possible that anyone
influenced by such an attack has already turned against her," Stauber said.
The Washington, DC-based "Stop Her Now" - "Rescuing America from the Radical
Ideas of Hillary Clinton" - is now run by Dallas-based Republican political
activist and businessman Richard H Collins, who is also a contributor to former
New York mayor Rudy Giuliani's campaign for the Republican presidential
nomination.
Collins, a graduate of Southern Methodist University - the future home of the
George W Bush presidential library - heads Richard Collins Enterprises, a
family investment company, and is also vice president and director of the
Collins Family Foundation.
According to a biography posted at Townhall.com, a conservative website,
Collins also serves as chairman of the Dallas Entrepreneurial Political Action
Committee and "has been a strong activist in the Republican Party".
His "Stop Her Now" effort is employing a newer methodology: it uses humor and
satire to expose the "real truth about Hillary Clinton". The site has a daily
weblog and features "The Hillary Show", a weekly video lampooning the candidate
and her Democratic Party colleagues.
In a recent column posted at a blog called "Against Hillary" (Keep Corrupt and
Dishonest Hillary Clinton out of the White House), Collins resuscitated a
number of so-called Clinton-era "scandals", warned voters not to be taken in by
her claim of having "experience", and capped his assessment by writing, "Even a
cursory review of her time in the White House reinforces the truth that not
only is Hillary a big-government liberal, but [she is] an arrogant and vicious
one."
Citizens United is a conservative organization founded in 1998 by Floyd Brown,
who was recently described by McClatchy Newspapers as "among the nation's
best-known conservative political knife-throwers". Brown rose to fame for
creating the Willie Horton television advertisement that is credited with
helping derail Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988.
These days, the organization - whose board is chaired by Brown and whose
day-to-day operations are run by longtime Clinton-hater David Bossie - is in
production of a movie that it claims will tell the complete story of Hillary
Clinton's past scandals, and her radical plans for the future.
Bossie was chief investigator for the Whitewater hearings held by then-senator
Lauch Faircloth during Bill Clinton's presidency. Bossie was later fired for
editing and releasing to the media transcripts of prison conversations of
former Clinton administration official Webster Hubbell, which created the false
impression that Hillary Clinton was involved in billing irregularities at the
Rose Law Firm where she and Hubbell both worked.
In a recent fundraising pitch to Republican donors, former Clinton adviser
turned anti-Clintonista Dick Morris wrote: "If you liked how the Swift Boat
Veterans turned the tide against John Kerry, you understand how a top Clinton
aide can turn the tables and stop a Clinton-style liberal from becoming the
next president of the United States."
Citizens United has produced several movies over the past few years, including
one attacking the American Civil Liberties Union titled ACLU: At War with
America and a 2004 film titled Celsius 41.11 - the Temperature at Which
the Brain Begins to Die, which featured a host of conservative and
neo-conservative critics slamming Michael Moore's award-winning film Fahrenheit
9/11 and providing a full deconstruction of Kerry, then the Democratic
presidential nominee.
While none of Citizen United's cinematic efforts received significant
distribution or critical acclaim, the organization is hopeful that Hillary: The
Movie - which is aimed for a pre-primary election-season release - will
be buzzworthy enough to receive nationwide distribution.
A host of anti-Hillary books are also planned, including Whitewash by
Brent Bozell, the head of the Media Research Center, a conservative
media-watchdog group, and God and Hillary Clinton, by Paul Kengor, which
will look at her religious beliefs.
A recent post at the website of Human Events sums up the current rush to
"swiftboat" Hillary Clinton. Under the headline "Hillary's hypocrisy exposed:
Help prevent the next Clinton presidency", the conservative weekly newspaper is
offering a "sneak peek" - delivered via e-mail - into The Extreme Makeover of
Hillary Rodham Clinton, a new book by Bay Buchanan, sister of former
Republican presidential hopeful and television commentator Pat Buchanan.
According to Human Events editor-in-chief Tom Winter, Buchanan's book will
provide "all the ammunition you'll need to expose Hillary's hypocrisy".
Center for Media and Democracy's Stauber said: "The big loser in all this is
the voter, who will be fed more and more vile propaganda designed to keep them
from supporting candidates covered in mud."
Co-author of several books detailing the manipulative practices of the public
relations industry, Stauber said his "prediction is that by the end of the
November 2008 elections, hundreds of millions of dollars will have been spent
on swiftboating and other forms of negative attacks".
Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His
column "Conservative Watch" documents the strategies, players, institutions,
victories and defeats of the US right.
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