There was a lot of commotion recently when it was discovered that Sarah Palin’s “death panels” actually had its roots in a person and right wing group out of the Clinton era. However, it really doesn’t matter in the moment who said what first or where it originated if the President and Democrats take months before they catch on that their messaging is being hijacked, something that political history long ago taught us would be the plan of attack from the opposition. By then it’s too late. It wasn’t until this week that the White House finally put out a “viral email” on the subject, with today’s op-ed by Pres. Obama the latest catch up the Administration is playing. In the vacuum of preempting what we should know would happen, the hate machine of the right simply revved up an already laid out and proven strategy that continues to bedevil Democrats, the origins of which goes back a long, long way.
As I often do when cataclysmic challenges besiege debate, I go hunting in history for a moment of fertilization, knowing full well that when current drama erupts to such stunning affect, as it did recently when Sarah Palin launched her “death panel” profanity, the right is following a well worn script.
Case in point, Sean Hannity. Since McCain – Palin’s defeat, he’s fond of saying, when it comes to Republicans, he believes in “no pale pastels.” Referring to the Republican-conservatism that Hannity feels will lead his people and party back to the political promised land. Hannity then goes on to list a few of his most important talking points, which in the context of “no pale pastels” really isn’t the point. What is the point is the foundation beneath “no pale pastels, which harkens back to Goldwater days. To Russ Walton, who, according to the new generation historian, Rick Perlstein, was a “brilliant, driven former corporate publicist” who was also an administrator for the National Association of Manufacturers and once upon a Goldwater era was a magnificent wrangler of California conservatives.
The passage below is from Rick’s book, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the unmaking of the American consensus (pgs. 486-487):
He gave his staff this motto: “No pale pastels.” The RNC, leery of charges of racism, used white actors in those “riot” shots. Walton’s rioters were not white. They were not actors. They were Harlemites caught in the act of bashing windows and attacking policemen by news phtographers during the uprising in July. … The brochures pressed into hands at the entrance to Goldwater rallies were propaganda masterpieces: “Lyndon Johnson’s Administration Is Too Busy Protecting Itself to Protect You,” on began. It showed a grocery story reduced to rubble, guarded by police in helmets. (Caption: “Johnson’s Administration has whitewashed the Bobby Baker hearings. It has ordered security investigation records burned.” The photo below showed two jet-black Negroes, blurred by action, obscured by night–the eye was immediately drawn to the dead center of the image, where a set of bared teeth leaped out in a composition as exquisitely arranged as Botticelli. … [..] A Goldwater quote subtly reminded readers what to blame–the Civil Rights Act signed two weeks before the riots began. … [...]
Rus Walton explained his modus operandi at a meeting the afternoon before Conversation at Gettysburg provided a lesson in how not to sell a presidential candidate. “We want to just make them mad, make their stomach turn,” he said, “take this latent anger and concern which now exists, build it up, and subtly turn and focus it”–focus it agains the ruthless man in the White House from which all these evils had to be shown to flow.
This is history. The Republican playbook that was written almost 50 years ago. Sean Hannity may not know the birth of over the top bluster, but he knows good propaganda patter when he hears it.
That the Obama White House and Democrats didn’t preempt this foreseen fulminating shows you that to ignore history is to fall victim to its lessons once again.
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