Tag Archives: Lee Atwater

Big week looms for Republican Party

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I’m not yet sure how much of the Republican National Convention I’m going to watch.

Keynote speech? Sure. Except I don’t know who’s giving it.

Presidential nominee acceptance speech? Absolutely, if only to see if Donald J. Trump veers too wildly off script.

This I do know: The Party of Lincoln/Reagan is going to become the Party of Trump.

God help ’em.

I’m still trying to figure out how the Republican Party establishment plans to speak glowingly of the man they’re about to nominate for the presidency of the United States. He has spent the bulk of the primary season hurling insults in every direction, including at the Republican Party brass! Political memories often become surprisingly short, but they also have this way of retaining insults for an amazingly long time.

Which leads me to believe that the establishment types are going to have little time on the podium during the four-day event in Cleveland.

It’ll be left to the assorted celebrities who’ve lined up behind Trump’s insurgent candidacy. He’s been crowing all along how he doesn’t “need” the power brokers who run the GOP. We’re about to learn whether his boasting will come true.

Just suppose, too, that absent any public service record that the Trumpkins can tout, what will be left for them to say from the convention podium.

Oh! I think I know. They’re going to unsheathe the long knives and plunge them into the Democratic nominee, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

She will be portrayed as the daughter of Satan. They’re plan — in the words of the late GOP chairman Lee Atwater — “peel the bark” off the Democrats’ presidential candidate.

Yes, indeed. Given that the Republicans are going first in this year’s political nominating convention cycle, they’ll get to set the tone for the campaign for the White House.

Rest assured, Democrats have their own burdens to bear with Clinton. So, they’ll be loaded to the teeth when they convene their convention in Philadelphia right after the Republicans adjourn their convention in Cleveland.

Get ready, folks, for a heck of a wild ride beginning next week.

Lee Atwater’s home state: dirty tricks thrive there

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Lee Atwater has been dead for some time, but his legacy lives on.

The late Republican Party operative — a South Carolina native — was known as an aggressive campaigner. He was so aggressive, in fact, that many observers called him “dirty,” “mean-spirited,” “cheap.”

The GOP presidential dog-and-pony show is heading into the Palmetto State, where it appears to be quite likely that the nastiness that has punctuated the party primary campaign just might get whole lot nastier.

Oh, I remember some of the recent history relating to South Carolina.

Dirty tricks await the candidates

Perhaps the most memorable hatchet job occurred in 2000, when U.S. Sen. John McCain, fresh off his Republican primary victory in New Hampshire, ran into a dirty-trick buzzsaw.

Someone floated a bogus rumor that Cindy McCain — wife of the former Vietnam prisoner of war — had a “drug problem.” Then came another falsehood, that Sen. McCain had fathered an African-American child out of wedlock.

McCain blamed the dirty tricks on Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s campaign. It rankled McCain so badly that at one GOP debate that year, McCain told Bush to “take your hand off” the senator’s arm.

Lee Atwater was known as a tough-as-nails operative. He died of cancer in 1991. Wherever he is today, I’m quite certain he’d wish he could return to take part in what is likely to become a bloodbath.

It’s the South Carolina way.

So much for southern gentility.