Don Segretti 4.0, A Teabagger Nation

Turns its lonely eyes*


To you.**


It would be tempting to label this "The Return of the Ratfuckers", but of course the GOP Ratfuck squad (from Corrente) --

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.
...

-- has never left us.

They have simply become the Conservative movement, outright. Root and branch.

And it isn't really that surprising; after all, the long, deprave and successful history of GOP Ratfucking means that most of today's Conservatives have never lived in a political world where punching Liberals (and feminazis and gays and immigrants and unions and the ACLU and poor people and brown people) in the face wasn't considered great sport.

Have never known a time when smirking in blood-drunk delight at doing things that they believe will irritate and enrage the the imaginary Dirty Fucking Hippie that hides under their bed

-- even what the actual outcomes of their filthy, little machinations result in one ecological, economic, constitutional, and foreign policy catastrophe after another -- was not the absolute core of the Modern Conservative Movement.

Whatever their calendar age may be, they are vicious children who simply do not -- or will not -- remember or believe that once upon a time, buried in a shallow grave along with the rest of the Actual History of the United States that Modern Conservatives so frantically struggle to wish out of existence...

...Republican’s were known to have consciences. Even the most conservative among them would rise up from time to time over matters of principle.

Consider this statement from Representative Lawrence Hogan, a Republican from Maryland, from over thirty years ago, as the Watergate scandal was coming to a head:

“The thing that's so appalling to me is that the President, when this whole idea was suggested to him, didn't, in righteous indignation, rise up and say, "Get out of here, you're in the office of the President of the United States. How can you talk about blackmail and bribery and keeping witnesses silent? This is the presidency of the United States." But my President didn't do that. He sat there and he worked and worked to try to cover this thing up so it wouldn't come to light.”

Ah, but such inconvenient men and memories have been all but obliterated; shoved aside or down the memory hole to make room for the monsters that Conservatives were breeding inside their fascist whelping box.

Creepy little sociopaths like Nixon Ratfucker slug Don Segretti:

June 27, 1971, and Beyond: Nixon Campaign ‘Agent Provocateur’ Funded by White House

Donald Segretti.Donald Segretti. [Source: Spartacus Educational]Three attorneys—one the assistant attorney general of Tennessee, Alex Shipley—are asked to work as so-called “agent provocateur” for the Campaign to Re-elect the President (CREEP), an organization working to re-elect President Nixon (see October 10, 1972). The three tell their story to Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein in late September 1972, and Bernstein’s colleague Bob Woodward learns more from his FBI source, “Deep Throat,” days later (see October 7, 1972 and October 9, 1972). They all say they were asked to work to undermine the primary campaigns of Democratic presidential candidates by the same man, Donald Segretti, a former Treasury Department lawyer who lives in California. Segretti will later be identified as a CREEP official. Segretti, the attorneys will say, promises them “big jobs” in Washington after Nixon’s re-election (see November 7, 1972). All three says they rejected Segretti’s offers (see June 27-October 23, 1971). Segretti himself will deny the allegations, calling them “ridiculous.”

Part of a Larger Pattern? - Bernstein and Woodward connect the Segretti story to other Nixon campaign “dirty tricks” they are already aware of, including efforts by Watergate burglar James McCord (see June 19, 1972) to “investigate” reporter Jack Anderson, attempts by Watergate surveillance man Alfred Baldwin (see June 17, 1972) to infiltrate Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt’s successful attempts to electronically “bug” Democratic campaign headquarters (see May 27-28, 1972) and his investigation of Democratic presidential candidate Edward Kennedy (see June 19, 1972), and McCord’s rental of an office next to the offices of Democratic presidential candidate Edmund Muskie. To the reporters, the Segretti story opens up speculation that the Nixon campaign had undertaken political espionage efforts long before the Watergate burglary. In their book All the President’s Men, Bernstein and Woodward write, “Watergate could have been scheduled before the president’s re-election chances looked so good and perhaps someone had neglected to pull the plug.” Bernstein has heard of CIA operations such as this mounted against foreign governments, called “black operations,” but sometimes more colloquially called “mindf_cking.” [Bernstein and Woodward, 1974, pp. 114-115]

Segretti a 'Small Fish in a Big Pond' - An FBI official investigating CREEP’s illegal activities will call Segretti “a small fish in a big pond,” and will say that at least 50 undercover Nixon operatives have worked around the country to disrupt and spy on Democratic campaigns.
...

Which begat vermin like Lee Atwater:



Which begat Rove and Dubya:



Which begat this anonymous toad (from Playboy):

The Rogues of "K" Street -- Confessions of a Tea Party Consultant

...
"You’re going to see something spectacular," an old friend who has a knack for black-bag operations said as he proudly downed his vodka. "About a month from now you’ll see ACORN explode from within." Right on schedule a video was released that showed undercover conservative activists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles getting advice from employees at the Baltimore office of the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now on how to smuggle underage El Salvadoran girls into a fictitious brothel.

That’s when I realized this isn’t an average fringe movement. This one is credible, legit and—for the first time in a decade—scaring the crap out of the left. In my years as a campaign hack and then as a consultant, I’ve created more than my share of fake grassroots organizations. Some were downright evil but effective beyond expectations. Did you get an automated call from the sister of a 9/11 victim asking you to reelect President Bush in 2004? That was me. Did you get a piece of mail with the phrase supports abortion on demand as a means of birth control? That may have been me too.

Conservatives had been trying to take down ACORN for three decades. Where they failed, BigGovernment.com and my friends succeeded. In one magnificent explosion, a loose group of troublemakers, libertarians and Republicans took its first scalp. Sonja Merchant-Jones, former co-chair of ACORN’s Maryland chapter, told The New York Times in March, "That 20-minute video ruined 40 years of good work."

The ACORN blood tasted good.
...

The cynical among us think it’s a group of peasants with pitchforks controlled by an underground cabal of Glenn Beck, wealthy donors and the guys who killed JFK. But the worst thing I can say about the Tea Party I work for is that it can make lots of noise but can’t win without professional help. I love the irony of helping run this organization from the St. Regis Bar.
...

And of course now the wingnut infrastructure is fully in place and battle-tested as it has never been before.

They have their their own, profitable and lavishly-funded propaganda arm, facing off against a Corporate Media which is either hopelessly compromised, or staggering under legions of Centrist jellyfish.

Their Murderer's Row of market-tested demagogues.

Their own shoutycracker-crazy astroturfed movement ready to hit the streets waving Hitler signs and/or M16s at the drop of a hat.

Their own firmly indoctrinated alternate history of the Unites States, so laughably fraudulent that it would make a North Korean blush (from the Playboy article):

"Bush mangled the GOP brand into a grotesque form that conservatives haven’t recognized in five years."

[Brief driftglass aside --

I myself had “2011” in the “George W. Who?” revisionist history pool when I wrote this in four years ago ("Christopaths of Glory”):

...
In five years, having voted for Bush will have become the parachute pants of this decade.

It will become the “Oh my GOD. What the fuck was I thinking?” shameful secret people will occasionally and elliptically allude to by piping up with, “well, he did good after 9/11” as schoolchildren are taught what a disaster on every front and by every measure he was, and as adults who now have to pay and pay dearly for the myriad lies and crimes and follies of George W. Bush recount his Top 100 Fuckups and bitterly laugh and laugh and laugh.

--end brief aside.]

They have centrifuged out anyone who finds wearing the Beck shirt too uncomfortable and relentlessly pared the Base down to the Swine of the First Water.

They have their fellow travelers embedded deep inside the gummint's perimeter, sharpening their knives , just itching to to fire up the Great Wingnut Impeachment Engine and finish what they started under Clinton.

And most importantly -- despite the confessions of the anonymous political button man in the Playboy article -- they have achieved a genuine, long-term radical victory in that there really is no longer any need to hire "agent provocateurs", because to be a Modern Conservative in 2010 means that you have so completely internalized all of the metric tons of self-delusional, self-deceptive doublethinkful horseshit that you must practice every minute of every day that you can remain a Modern Conservative.

In other words, they're all Ratfuckers now.





*[From left, Don Segretti, H. R. Halderman (Nixon hatchet man) and Pat Buchanan (Nixon hatespeechwriter)]

**(From left, James O'Keefe, Andrew Breitbart (Conservative fink-wrangler) and Hannah Giles

completes the triumvirate)