lee atwater; big news...

[ben ttech]

his wife died and their daughters has released a drove of documents for investigators

they have many chapters of a memoir that had been untouched since his uptimely death by cancer in 91'


sorry the source and they pain they make reading it
must be else where


https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-des ... normalized" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Intrinsic]

Interesting to see how this plays out as a prosecution of the big lie continues over summer.

[Intrinsic]

Opening in a private tab then stopping internet connection allowed me to read it.
Excerpt:

...
Atwater’s tactics were a bridge between the old Republican Party of the Nixon era, when dirty tricks were considered a scandal, and the new Republican Party of Donald Trump, in which lies, racial fearmongering, and winning at any cost have become normalized. Chapter 5 of Atwater’s memoir in particular serves as a Trumpian precursor. In it, Atwater, who worked in the Office of Political Affairs in the Reagan White House, and managed George H. W. Bush’s 1988 Presidential campaign before becoming the Republican Party’s chairman at the age of thirty-seven, admits outright that he only cared about winning, not governing. “I’ve always thought running for office is a bunch of bullshit. Being in a office is even more bullshit. It really is bullshit,” he wrote. “I’m proud of the fact that I understand how much BS it is.”

In the nineteen-eighties, Atwater became infamous for his effective use of smears. Probably his best-known one was tying Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, Bush’s Democratic Presidential opponent in 1988, to Willie Horton, a Black convict who went on a crime spree after getting paroled in the state. A menacing ad featuring Horton was a blatant attempt to stir fear among white voters that Dukakis would be soft on crime. At the very end of his life, Atwater publicly apologized to Dukakis for it. But Atwater’s draft memoir makes clear that he had already mastered the dark political arts as a teen-ager. In fact, it seems that practically everything Atwater learned about politics he learned in high school. It’s easy to see the future of the Republican Party in the anti-intellectual dirty tricks of his school days.
...

[ben ttech]

was an amazing article and i can only assume the facts will continue to roll in...


but a tortured man no doubt

[ben ttech]

still an amazing revelation
i see another tortured soul acting out
i get that

but, not as he was

like to think i could have fought his tongue

but thats a wild nothing

his papers should be widely regarded