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Dirty Politics – Part Two (cont.)

In September 2007, not long after actor and former senator Fred Thompson joined the already crowded GOP presidential field, a website appeared called PhoneyFred.org. The site was posted anonymously, but it was essentially an opposition research effort framed in colorful language to highlight Thompson’s weaknesses as a candidate.  Among the items on the site was a quote from Richard Nixon calling Thompson “dumb as hell.”

The talking points on the site were a serious attack on Thompson’s record. The site took aim at Thompson’s attempt to sell himself as a good ol’ country lawyer who reflected the Christian family values desired by the evangelical wing of the GOP. PhoneyFred posted extensive citations to research showing that he had worked as a lobbyist for a family planning organization.

The site failed to identify its authors, but a few weeks later, The Washington Post traced it to an executive at TTS Strategies, a South Carolina political consulting firm working for another candidate, Mitt Romney. It was quickly taken down, but the damage was done and Thompson’s campaign never mustered much support.  TTS Strategies is headed by J. Warren Tompkins, a legendary Republican political strategist linked indirectly to many of the state’s most vicious campaigns.

PhoneyFred.org is an indication of just how institutionalized some of the dirty tricks in politics have become, particularly for Republicans. Romney’s campaign paid TTS Strategies and J. Warren Tompkins Inc. nearly $200,000 for get out the vote and political consulting work. Dirty politics is lucrative business, which is why the candidates may change, but the consultants do not.

Rudy Giuliani also experienced this phenomenon before he withdrew from the race.  In late November 2007, Iowa Republicans started receiving an e-mail titled “Giuliani and his Pedophile Friends.” The e-mail read, “If Rudy becomes president, is he planning on putting people like Catholic priest Msgr. Alan Placa in his Cabinet? I hope not! Remember Fr. Placa when you go to the caucuses, and make sure your friends know, too!” (In 2003, a grand jury in Suffolk County, New York, accused a “Priest F” of child molestation and of covering up sexual abuse by other priests, but did not indict any of them because too much time had passed for the alleged offenses to be prosecuted. Placa, a longtime Giuliani friend who now works for Giuliani’s consulting firm, acknowledged that the grand jury report was referring to him and stepped down from active service as a priest, but he denies the substance of the allegations.)

The e-mail was made to look as if a prominent backer of Mitt Romney had sent it. It was a classic dirty trick: a smear that delivers a one-two punch by disseminating negative information about one candidate while making another candidate look bad for launching a smear, even one that is substantiated by facts.

Similar attacks were going on in New Hampshire, where the state attorney general is investigating allegations that anonymous telemarketers called state residents asking whether they knew, among other things, that then-frontrunner Romney is a Mormon and that he spent the Vietnam War in France as a missionary. The calls mentioned John McCain favorably, suggesting that he’d arranged for calls disguised as an opinion poll but whose intent was to smear. McCain vehemently denied this, a denial made believable because of his own experience of similar though more malicious and false attacks on him during his race against Bush during the South Carolina primary in 2000.  Anonymous calls and e-mails suggested that he had fathered a black child out of wedlock, that his wife was a drug addict, and that he was mentally unstable.

The New Hampshire calls aimed at Romney were traced to a Utah telemarketing firm that has had various indirect ties to Romney himself and also had done work on behalf of Giuliani.  But these calls were made at the behest of an Oregon firm, which told reporters that it was conducting legitimate opinion research, not a smear campaign. Nevertheless, it would not divulge the identity of its client. A spokesman for the state’s attorney general told the Center that, as of May 30, the office is “still in the midst of investigating” the matter.