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Republicans tie Daschle to Iraqi Info Minister
From Josh Marshall - EFLIf youâve ever needed a textbook example of the psychological theory of projection, itâs those GOP operatives and their dingbat jihad against Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle. It all got under way in 2001 when GOP pollster Frank Luntz sent around a memo urging Republicans to âGingrichâ the then-majority leader. Since then, they have spent their off-hours scouring the pages of Danteâs Inferno for epithets florid enough for the wild-eyed South Dakota Democrat. Last year, most Daschle-bashers focused on ousting his protégé, Sen. Tim Johnson. Then-Rep. John Thuneâs campaign tried to do it with cooked-up charges of âmassive voter fraudâ on the stateâs Indian reservations, a âscandalâ that eventually collapsed under the weight of its own insubstantiality. The real shenanigans came after Election Day, when a group of Thune lawyers mounted its own voter-fraud âinvestigationâ by assembling some 50 affidavits detailing all manner of alleged irregularities and illegalities. The stateâs Republican attorney general decided that only three of the 50 affidavits alleged anything illegal. And the Argus Leaderâs David Kranz, the dean of South Dakota political reporters, found that even those three had some rather fishy origins. Republican lawyers had âpre-wordedâ a stack of affidavits alleging a very specific vote-buying incident. They gave them to Kim Vanneman, a GOP county party chairwoman, who then traveled through the Rosebud Indian reservation, more or less seeing if anyone might be willing to sign one. Of those three affidavits, the attorney general found that one was made up, another was forged and the signer of a third couldnât be located. That pretty much put an end to the GOPâs probe into Democratic âfraud.â But now the Daschle-bashers are revving up for â04. Last week, a group of GOP operatives ran an ad in the Argus Leader comparing Daschle to Iraqâs infamous Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf. That reminded locals of an ad from last year tying Daschle to Saddam Hussein. Posted by: liberalhawk 2003-05-09 |
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