Another Wacky Week at GOP Spin Central!

Trump Scares the Pants off of Murdoch
Dubya's Ham-handed Smear Attempts Backfire
Jim Nicholson Gives Al Gore a Lovely Billboard to Use

by Tamara Baker

Monday, Nov. 29, 1999 -- ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA (APJNS) -- Never let it be said that the Republican Party's media wing doesn't take Donald Trump -- or our own David Corn -- too seriously.

On November 26, one week after the Trumpster announced his famous 17% one-time-only, across-the-board tax on all those Americans worth $10 million and up, and but a few days after David Corn had a few kind words for The Donald, FOX News gave us an "expose" on Trump's sex life, as told by a former mistress.

Among the shocking, shocking revelations was this: The Donald was very good at sex and liked to have "at least once a day" -- and sometimes more.

Wow.

Rupert Murdoch, FOX's owner, certainly didn't become an American citizen just to lose 17% of his billions at one stroke to the IRS. (He'd rather spend his money propping up Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani, thank you very much.) The popularity of Trump's suggestion among those of us in the 99.9999% who will never see the $10 million tax bracket must have unnerved him.

Meanwhile, CNN had real revelations, of a far more shocking nature, concerning the persons behind the smearing of John McCain.

Many political figures are expressing disgust at the GOP's whispering campaign directed against Senator McCain (R-Ariz.), George W. Bush's strongest rival in the race for the GOP Presidential nomination.

While several conservative commentators - such as Jason Lewis in Minneapolis on KSTP-AM - are vainly trying to spin this so as to blame the Democrats for creating the whispering campaign, The Washington Post's Elizabeth Drew pointed the finger squarely at prominent Republicans, including Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), Sen. Paul Coverdell (R-Ga.), Sen. Don Nickels (R-Okla.), Sen Robert Bennett (R-Ut.) and the Bush campaign. (For those of you keeping track of pols and 'Nam, I believe that Lott got a student deferment, while Nickles took the National Guard route. Don't know what the other gents did.)

And a CNN interview featuring Admiral James Stockdale, Ross Perot's running mate in 1992, showed him reiterating a statement he made in an article that ran in the 11/.26/99 New York Times, to the effect that a person connected to George W. Bush's campaign called up Adm. Stockdale recently "soliciting comments on McCain's 'weaknesses'". Stockdale indignantly brushed off any speculation that McCain's 5 1/2 year POW stint did him any harm mentally; in fact, the good admiral maintained in his New York Times article that "The military psychiatrists who periodically examine former prisoners of war have found that the more resistant a man was to harsh treatment, the more emotionally stable he is likely to become later in life."

Seems that Dubya, while he has mastered the iron-fist aspect of his daddy when it comes to intimidation (look at how abjectly St. Martin's Press groveled before him over a book that probably tells far fewer lies about its subject than does a typical Regnery Press bio offering), doesn't know how to cover his tracks very well. "Oppo" tactics such as the McCain smear only work so long as they can't be traced back to their originators. When they can be, the boomerang potential is enormous.

This may be the final push that sends McCain over the top in New Hampshire. He's already neck-and-neck with Dubya, having closed what once seemed an insurmountable lead.

Meanwhile, speaking of backfiring oppo maneuvers:

The ever-witty Jim Nicholson, no doubt feeling stoked at his ability to make the national press print his anti-Gore RNCC blast-faxes almost verbatim under their own bylines (see the Daily Howler's archives for more on this), decided last week to take the battle straight to Gore's own campaign HQ in Nashville.

His idea: To rent a series of ads on a billboard across the street from Gore's headquarters.

Nyuk nyuk nyuk. This is actually an old, typically Republican tactic that shows their ability to burn off excess cash. (Rudy Boschwitz' people did that to Paul Wellstone's folks during the race for Boschwitz' Senate seat. He still lost.)

The first billboard is to feature Gore embracing Bill Clinton, with the quote "...one of America's greatest Presidents" prominently featured alongside the photo. This is based on Nicholson's odd belief that this billboard would prove "embarrassing" somehow to Gore because of what Nicholson claims is Gore's "distancing" himself from that Evil Bill Clinton.

Setting aside the fact that all vice-presidents seeking to move up the ladder must make a name for themselves outside of the shared identity they have with their Prezzes (look at how swiftly and eagerly Dubya's daddy axed the political appointees he inherited from Ronald Reagan), or the fact that Gore employs quite a few of the same folks that Clinton has (Naomi Wolf and James Carville, to name a few), why should Al Gore distance himself from a man whose approval ratings continue to be far higher than those for any single Republican Senator or Congressmember?

One would think that the Vice-President, who certainly seems to be smarter than the average bear, would have taken heed from the lessons provided by the 1998 elections: Namely, that those Democratic pols who stuck the closest to Bill Clinton, were the ones who did best in 1998.

Remember, the GOP had spent a good $100 million than the Democrats did on the 1998 races. The Republicans expected, right up until Election Week itself, to take 50 to 60 House seats and 20 Senate seats, thus guaranteeing supermajorities in both Houses and the ability to impeach and remove Bill Clinton. Even the murmurs of the electorate didn't do much to alter those predictions; the "pessimists" were predicting "only" a 20-seat gain in the House and a 10-seat gain in the Senate.

Instead, they got slobberknockered: No net gain in the Senate, and a five-seat loss in the House - not counting the imminent departure of such boils on the nation's buttocks as Newt Gingrich and Bob Livingston.

The moral of the story: Stick by Bill. It's good for you.