How the Right's Smear Machine Started

Richard Nixon, the 37th President of the United States

By Robert Parry, Consortium News

09 March 12

mericans sometimes wonder how the nation’s political process got so unspeakably nasty with vitriol pouring forth especially from right-wing voices like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Michael Savage, to name just a few. Yet, whenever called on this ugliness, conservatives insist that they are the real victims, picked on by the Left.

This destructive and whiny dynamic has existed at least since the late 1960s when angry passions spilled over from the Vietnam War and grew worse after Richard Nixon exploited Democratic dissension on the war to win the White House in 1968 – and then continued the war for another four nasty years.

As president, Nixon also responded to the fury splintering American society with wedge issues, appealing to the "silent majority" and denouncing anti-war protesters as "bums." He rode that divisive formula to a landslide victory in November 1972 but soon ensnared himself in the Watergate political spying scandal that drove him from office in August 1974.

Out of all that anger emerged an American Right that believed, as an article of faith, that the Democrats and the "liberal press" had turned Nixon’s run-of-the-mill indiscretions in Watergate into a constitutional crisis to undo Nixon’s overwhelming electoral mandate of 1972.

So, over the next two decades – with Nixon in the background egging on Republican politicians – the Right built an attack machine that was designed to defend against "another Watergate" but also was available to destroy the "liberal" enemy.   READ MORE

Offensive Is Nothing New: Rush Limbaugh's 5 Worst Remarks

Limbaugh is losing advertisers fast after calling law student Sandra Fluke a "slut"--but bad behavior is nothing new for Rush. Here are five of his worst moments.

March 6, 2012

Has Rush Limbaugh finally gone too far?

Despite a notably insincere apology for calling Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” for the crime of using birth control pills, Limbaugh is shedding advertisers like mad. As of Monday evening, nine companies—including AOL, the parent company of the Huffington Post-- have stopped buying time on Limbaugh's radio show, and at least a couple say they have severed ties with the program permanently.

Even Republican presidential candidates have issued tepid condemnations of Limbaugh's rant. Mitt Romney, whose private equity firm Bain Capital is one of the owners of Clear Channel – which owns and broadcasts Premiere Radio Networks, the company that syndicates Limbaugh's show -- told reporters, “I’ll just say this, which is, it’s not the language I would have used,” before quickly changing the subject back to Tuesday's primaries. Democrats quickly pounced on Romney's wimpy repudiation, but none of them bothered to point out the presidential candidate's profit motive in Rush's program.  READ MORE