If a dirty, Republican campaign trick works well enough, you can bet you'll see it used again and again and again, in races all across the country.
And don't think that will change if only the Republicans would get caught, red-handed. Oh my, no!
Now, before I go on, it's disclosure time. Because some of us still care about that sort of thing: I do blogging work for Bernie Sanders -- the latest victim of the scheme I'm about to fill you in on.
Some of you may remember when now-Sen. John Thune used paid campaign operatives to run anti-Daschle blogs, supposedly unconnected to the Thune campaign, in the South Dakota Senate race in 2004.
And some of you may remember when
The New Republic ran
Michael Crowley's story on the widespread interest Thune's seminar on the subject generated among his GOP Senate colleagues.
Now we know what Republicans were meant to do with that information. Caught red-handed, they were to... well, do it again, of course!
Columnist Peter Freyne of the "Vermont alternative webweekly" Seven Days tells us all about it:
[A]s we all know, politics provides a propaganda-style mix of image and substance. It's a combination where the line between fiction and fact is often blurred or even eliminated entirely. And sometimes, political campaigns go the extra mile in the name of deception. It's sure worked for George W. Bush, eh?
That appears to be the case involving one of the new political blogs on the growing Vermont Internet stage titled "Vermont Senate Race." You'll find it here: www.VermontSenateRace.com.
The site is run by an unnamed "Administrator," who claims -- surprise, surprise! -- no connection with any candidate. But Freyne wasn't buying it:
So we did a little digging -- love the Internet Age!
We learned that domain name "VermontSenateRace.com" was registered with Melbourne IT LTD., a firm with an Emeryville, California, address, on October 5, 2005. Our Internet-savvy sources say it's a registry one would use if one wanted to "anonymize" ownership of the website. The purpose of an "anonymizing" service is to hide the tracks of whoever is really behind it. Anyone who signs up gets to use the Emeryville, CA post-office box as their website administrator's address.
Interesting.
Using appropriate search tools, however, we were able to find a VermontSenateRace.com registry page with a human name attached. The name of only one person appears: "Jeffrey Bartley." Bartley is listed next to "Organization Name."
Bartley? Bartley? Bartley?
The name rang a bell.
Ready for this, folks? Might want to sit down first. That's because the name "Jeffrey Bartley" also appears several times in GOP Candidate Richard Tarrant's recent FEC filing. Bartley, in fact, has been a salaried employee of "Tarrant for Senate Inc." since October, receiving his first paycheck one week after the bogus, seemingly nonpartisan "Vermont Senate Race" website was registered.
For those of you who don't have a clear recollection of the Thune strategy, you'll appreciate this refresher from the Crowley TNR article, linked above:
In late January, Republican members of Congress convened at a rural West Virginia resort to plot strategy for the new congressional session and the 2006 midterm elections. They held meetings, on issues like Social Security and tax reform, led by committee chairmen and even the president himself. But no session generated as much interest as the one led by a mere freshman, John Thune of South Dakota. It's rare for such a junior senator to lecture his wizened colleagues. But Thune's elders listened with rapt attention as he explained how bloggers and partisan Internet "journalism" helped him defeat former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle last fall. David Winston, a GOP pollster who was present, says that, "given that success story, the senators were very interested.... A lot of conversation went back and forth. I think we were scheduled for about an hour, and it went an hour and a half." Even senators who missed out on the session have been asking for details of Thune's story. "Other senators have asked him in private how he worked with the bloggers," says Thune spokesman Alex Conant.
[...]
[W]hat Thune was trying to explain to his colleagues was something less well-understood: the influence bloggers can wield over the local media, which largely shape and referee House and Senate races. As it happens, a key player in the Thune-Daschle race was the now-notorious Jeff Gannon (née Guckert), the conservative Talon News correspondent with a thing for dog tags and big muscles. Yet Gannon's role is less important than the larger implications--which Republicans seem to be grasping faster than Democrats--blogs have for the coming 2006 congressional elections.
[...]
In 2003, two blogs appeared. The first was called South Dakota Politics. Written by University of South Dakota law student Jason Van Beek, its inaugural post declared war on "the lazy journalism practiced by South Dakota's flagship newspaper," the Argus Leader. The second site, Daschle v. Thune, also began pounding on the Argus Leader--and, more specifically, the paper's veteran political writer, David Kranz, who has long been considered the dean of South Dakota political journalism. Ultimately, this blogger would identify himself as Jon Lauck, a South Dakota State University history professor--neglecting to mention his past as a local GOP operative and chairman of the Lawyers for Thune Committee. Neither Lauck nor Van Beek would reveal payments--of $27,000 and $8,000, respectively--from the Thune campaign itself. (Van Beek has since joined Thune's Senate staff.)
[...]
This story is no doubt a sign of things to come. Operatives in both parties are already plotting ways to manipulate the local media in the coming 2006 elections.
[...]
There are already signs of such activity. A few months ago, a Minnesota-based blog appeared called Dayton v. Kennedy, dedicated to supporting GOP candidate Mark Kennedy against incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Dayton. (Dayton has since announced he won't run; the blog awaits the new Democratic candidate.) Sure enough, the blog has targeted local media outlets like the Minneapolis Star Tribune, leveling charges of liberal bias. The blog's author, Gary Matthew Miller, claims in an e-mail that he is no GOP plant. But, he says, "I will acknowledge inspiration from Daschle v. Thune." He's surely not going to be the only one.
And so he's not! Welcome, Jeffrey Bartley and Rich Tarrant, to the John Thune Hall of Shame!
Caught nine months out from election day, too! Is this a new record for incompetence in hiding unethical behavior online?