GOP Launching Smear Tactics Perfected During Clinton Years on Obama

By Robert Parry, Consortium News. Posted March 3, 2009.

Beck envisioned the uprising -- theoretically set in 2014 -- starting "because people have been so disenfranchised" leading to a "bubba effect" touched off by federal agents from the ATF or FBI arresting some rancher in Texas or Arizona who has taken the law into his own hands in defending his property.

"That's totally possible," ex-Sgt. Strong said. "You've got people who are going to do the right thing to truly protect the interests of the United States, to include their own. … Your second and third orders of effect are going to be your bubbas hunkering down and being anti-government."

Beck, who was a longtime fixture on CNN's Headline News before moving to Fox, then expanded on the justification for the bubba uprising against a federal government that was "coming in and disenfranchising people over and over and over again -- and having the people say please listen to us."

According to Beck, these oppressed Americans "know the Constitution. They know the writings of the Founders and they feel that the government -- or they will in this scenario and I think we're on this road -- the government has betrayed the Constitution. So they will see themselves as people who are standing up for the Constitution."

Beck then turned to ex-CIA officer Scheuer and asked, "So how do you defuse this, Michael, or how long even do we have before this becomes a crazy real scenario?"

"I don't think you'd want to defuse it, Glenn," Scheuer responded. "The Second Amendment is … at base not about hunting or about a militia, but about resisting tyranny. The Founders were very concerned about allowing individual citizens weaponry to defend themselves as a last resort against a tyrannical government."

As the discussion edged toward advocacy of violent revolution, Beck sought to reel it back in a bit.

"Don't get me wrong," the host said. "I am against the government. And I think they've just been horrible. I do think they are betraying the principles of our Founders every day they're in office. But I have to tell you this scenario scares the living daylights out of me because it is shaking nitroglycerine."

Beck then got back to the point: "Do the soldiers come in and do they round up people or do they fight with the people for the Constitution? What does the Army, what does the military do?"

Scheuer answered: "I don't think the military is ever going to shoot on the American people, sir. I think the military -- of all people -- read the Constitution every year, right through."

Beck then suggested that Obama's stimulus package might lead to this back-door federal tyranny.

"We just had in our stimulus package a way for if your governor says no to the money, the legislature can go around the governor and go right to the Feds," Beck said. "It's this kind of thing that would make the federal government say, ‘You know what? We can call up the National Guard. We don't need your governor to do it.'"

Such insurrectionist musings on Fox News are not likely to be taken seriously by most people. Indeed, many Americans may find it amusing that Fox has developed a heartfelt concern about disenfranchising voters after its enthusiastic embrace of Bush's undemocratic "election" in 2000 or that Fox now feels a sudden reverence for the Constitution after eight years of defending Bush as he trampled it.

But this sort of Fox chatter runs the risk of feeding the well-nursed grievances of angry white "bubbas" and possibly inspiring a new Timothy McVeigh.

More significantly, today's Republican leaders -- finding themselves with little new to offer -- appear to have turned to the well-worn pages of this earlier GOP playbook to choose the same game plan that set the nation on a dangerous and destructive course 16 years ago, a course that only now, finally, may be playing out.

See more stories tagged with: right, clinton, propaganda, obama, smears

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from Politics! Sign up now »