As AMERICAblog pointed out today, Donald Trump's knives-out anti-immigration attack ad against Jeb! is nothing short of a reboot of the infamous Willie Horton ad which Jeb!'s daddy used to blow Michael Dukakis out of way in 1988.
Donald Trump goes Willie Horton on Jeb Bush
8/31/15 1:24pm by Jon Green
With a 21st Century take on one of the most iconic moments of racism in political advertising, Donald Trump hit Jeb Bush today with a video, posted to Instagram, juxtaposing Bush’s “act of love” comments on immigration with pictures of immigrants who have committed crimes...
It's a hateful piece of fascist race-baiting, but it's also a work of minor evil genius. Because in case you haven't been paying attention to American politics for the last 30 years, from Poppy Bush slinging Lee Atwater slime with both hands while wrapped in an American flag --
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In 1988, one of the central attacks revolved around the Pledge of Allegiance. Mr. Dukakis, as governor, had vetoed state legislation in 1977 that required teachers to lead their students in the pledge. He did so on the basis of an advisory opinion from the state court, which said the legislation was unconstitutional.
Mr. Dukakis, a Harvard lawyer surrounded by other Harvard lawyers, believed himself on very firm ground. But by August 1988, his Republican opponent, Vice President George H.W. Bush, was rousing huge crowds with a contemptuous question: “What is it about the Pledge of Allegiance that upsets him so much?”
Mr. Dukakis, Mr. Bush said, was “out in deep left field on these issues.” He was also “a card-carrying member of the A.C.L.U.,” more concerned with giving furloughs to criminals — like Willie Horton — than upholding national values, the vice president asserted.
“I simply can’t understand the kind of thinking that lets first-degree murderers out of jail on a furlough and won’t deal with the Pledge of Allegiance,” Mr. Bush said.
-- to his halfwit, dry-drink son unleashing the full ratfucking fury of Atwater's protege, Karl Rove, on John McCain in 2000 --
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McCain’s closest aides were so stunned by the angle of the attack that at first they tried to shield him from it. “We expected one thing, and it was quite the opposite,” said Fletcher, who personally saw the “Negro child” flyers “all over every car” at the debate. “We figured they would go after him on some sort of philandering issue. McCain had pretty well knocked all that down [by admitting in his 1999 autobiography that, at some point after his five and a half years in a North Vietnamese prison, he’d been unfaithful to his first wife], but I always figured that would sort of be the underground thing there. But, man, the child thing.… I’ve seen the worst form of racist sons of bitches in the world in David Duke, but this was unbelievable.”
Almost daily, the ugly buzz grew. Another prominent rumor was that Cindy was a drug addict. In 1994 she’d admitted that she had a prescription-painkiller problem and blamed it on two spinal surgeries and the stress of her husband’s role in the Keating Five scandal. (He was rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee for intervening with federal regulators on behalf of a disgraced financier.)
There were other whispers as well: McCain had slept with prostitutes and given his wife V.D.; he’d turned traitor in the “Hanoi Hilton,” or was mentally unstable from his captivity, or was a Manchurian Candidate, brainwashed to destroy the G.O.P. (There was then, and still is, a wacky Web site devoted to those last theories. The former Green Beret behind it, Ted Sampley, is back at it today with a savage “Stop Hanoi John Kerry” diatribe; he also supports the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Beyond Sampley, most anti-McCain vets in South Carolina opposed the senator on political and/or veterans’ issues—not for his war service. A top McCain aide told me he didn’t think the vets’ antagonism was nearly the factor that the more personal attacks were.) For just meeting with the gay Log Cabin Republicans, McCain was labeled the “Fag Army” candidate.
-- The Bush Crime family has always been more than willing to spelunk as deep as necessary into any available political sewer in order to win an election.
And for the most part, the Beltway media has been willing to let the Bushes job out their political wetwork to the scum of the Earth, dab the blood and viscera daintily from the corners of their mouths once the slaughter is done, and then go right back to pretending they're a tribe of genteel, well-mannered aristocrats without too many questions being asked. As the late Doctor Thompson wrote back in 2000:
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There was one exact moment, in fact, when I knew for sure that Al Gore would Never be President of the United States, no matter what the experts were saying -- and that was when the whole Bush family suddenly appeared on TV and openly scoffed at the idea of Gore winning Florida. It was Nonsense, said the Candidate, Utter nonsense. ... Anybody who believed Bush had lost Florida was a Fool. The Media, all of them, were Liars & Dunces or treacherous whores trying to sabotage his victory.
They were strong words and people said he was Bluffing. But I knew better. Of course Bush would win Florida. Losing was out of the question. Here was the whole bloody Family laughing & hooting & sneering at the dumbness of the whole world on National TV.
The old man was the real tip-off. The leer on his face was almost frightening. It was like looking into the eyes of a tall hyena with a living sheep in its mouth. The sheep's fate was sealed, and so was Al Gore's. ... Everything since then has been political flotsam & Gibberish.
The whole Presidential election, in fact, was rigged and fixed from the start. It was a gigantic Media Event, scripted & staged for TV. It happens every four years, at an ever-increasing cost & 90 percent of the money always goes for TV commercials...
Over and over again Trump has whipped his opponents at their own game by simply lifting pages straight out of Roger Ailes' Olde and Forgotten Bewitchments and Charmes and the Bush Family Grimoire and running the dark magic spells and incantations of the Conservative elite right back at them with twice the throw-weight.
As I said, the Trump campaign's latest ad is worst kind of hateporn for brownshirts. That said, if there are any Democratic campaign advisers out there who are not cribbing notes from the Trump campaign on the general subject of how to use the Right's own hexing powers against them, those advisers should be fired immediately.
Crossposted at driftglass.blogspot.com
