I have been known to be a bit of a Nixon apologist. Only a little. I mean lots of things I love, like the EPA, Amtrak, Clean Water, detente, and a few other things came into being while Nixon was president. However, at the end of the day, I, like many historians, find any positive attributes of Nixon, terribly countered by Christmas bombings, illegal invasions and dirty tricks.
Dirty tricks. Richard Nixon was pulling dirty political tricks long before 1950, but the election that pitted him against Helen Gahagan Douglas was among the dirtiest in American politics. From the “Pink Sheet” (it was really pink) to campaigning among DEMOCRATS during the primary (California allowed cross-party registration at the time). The list goes on. These same dirty tricks would be employed en masse to great effect in 1968 when Nixon began what we now know as the Southern strategy.
Dirty tricks are not new to politics, but they do vary in scale and intensity. What takes balls, however, is taking on the mantle of victimhood all the while you are planting the seeds of a filthy campaign, one more easily waged in a post Citizens United world.
This is where the CrazyKhazei insanity will hurt Brown. Because Fehrnstrom has such a long history with Romney (I remember reading his name frequently during the early days of the Springfield Financial Control Board), media reports seem obligated to note the connection as well as the “weird” that came out of the Obama camp. However, short-medium-long term, nobody in the Republican primary will care what Eric Fehrnstrom is doing, least of all for a client that is not Romney. Attacks Khazei and other Dems with sophomoric, crude and at times mildly sexist and homophobic tweets, is not going to hurt somebody who is not running against any of the Democratic candidates for Senate.
Unlike Romney, however, Scott Brown needs to win Massachusetts in order to actually win an election. I do not happen to believe that this event will absolutely cause permanent damage to Brown. However, it does create a huge problem for him in the Dirty Tricks Department.
As this post by David shows, Brown’s daughter Arianna (was this one he tried to find a date for on election night? Sorry, below the belt), is directly attacking what she thinks is the negative campaign against her father. Now, I am sure Arianna would love her father regardless and would probably defend him even if there was a video of Palpatine-esque corporatists buying him off. However, by reaching for the old reliable recruit a loving-family member to condemn dirty trickery, Brown finds himself awash in hypocrisy.
If you are reading this post, you have probably already gone through Chrismatth’s excellent capture of CrazyKhazei’s greatest hits. Additionally I am happy to say that the Globe PRINTED some of the worst tweets including the vaguely homophobic ones. So i wont’ be listing any in particular. However, any review of them expose themselves to be exactly the kind of negative campaigning that Arianna supposedly abhors. However, it is the fact that Brown’s New Media strategists bought crazykhazei.com that makes it a very dirty trick and one that was in planning back in January when Khazei seemed the likeliest entrant with a prayer to defeat Brown.
To make matters worse for Brown, the Globe has done its due diligence and stacked this sophomoric satire/nefarious plot against Brown’s whines about negative campaigning. Even though I still do not believe permanent damage is assured, the risk for it remains great for Brown, even if he completely eschews negative campaigning (HA!). As David Bernstein laid out a couple of days ago, the race will, unless the Democrat implodes Coakley style, come down to white suburban women, who in Massachusetts hate the National GOP for their image, but are willing to give Mass GOPers a chance. This kind of negativity was not as visible in that race and Coakely collapse ipso facto Sen. Brown. What’s that? Yup, Dirty Tricks. But Massachusetts forgave Nixon in 1972…whoops!
Now when Brown talks about negative campaigning and dirty tricks he cannot be taken seriously. This is especially true since he is not firing, sternly discilplining or requiring that Fehrnstrom offer a more heartfelt response. Indeed, as David said today, ahem, parodying Brown, “I wouldn’t know what to do without Fehrnstrom, so I can’t fire him.”
In many ways, Brown’s response and the antics of his masters handlers go hand in hand with my firm belief that Brown is a construction, a fabrication. We all here the rumors like how Brown’s truck is used to haul his daughter’s horse (FREE BAG OF BERTUCCI’S ROLLS TO ANYBODY WITH SOLID PROOF). Others are clear and conspicuous like his ownership of a summer home in New Hampshire that flies in the face of his everymanhood. Some are just suspicious like his near refusal to have open and unregulated town halls or even press interviews. It all adds up to an image and a bill of goods that Massachusetts voters were sold about some regular guy down the street…in a wealthy New Hampshire beach community.
The selling continues, but hopefully Massachusetts voters are catching on. Tricky Dick had no compulsions about getting about as down and dirty as one could. However, toward the end, Nixon was smart enough to jettison Halderman and Co, even if it didn’t save his presidency. Slick Scotto, however, can’t bear to live without his brain trust telling advising him what to do and how he can pull his next fast one.
According to this NYT article, Arianna told the press the original purpose for the truck:
It’s scary pulling a trailer?? Doesn’t sound like much of a truck driver to me!