Posted on 09/03/2007 5:36:49 PM PDT by SJackson
In these days of 24-hour news cycles churning out forgettable headlines about interchangeable celebrities of no importance, it's nostalgic to be reminded of a time when sensational news spawned complicated conspiracy theories that could be followed for years.
Arthur Bremer, an emotionally troubled young busboy from Milwaukee convicted 35 years ago of attempting to assassinate segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace, will be released from prison this year.
Today's reporters probably only dimly remember Bremer or the serious speculation that he could have been a patsy at the center of a criminal conspiracy masterminded by former CIA operatives working for the president of the United States.
Before you dismiss the idea as preposterous, remember that the president of the United States in 1972 was Richard Nixon. We now know the Nixon White House was a criminal headquarters employing former CIA operatives to carry out burglaries and plot kidnappings.
When Bremer was arrested as the lone gunman in the shooting of Wallace and three others at a Laurel, Md., shopping center, Wallace was campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination to challenge Nixon's re-election.
That was the election Nixon and his top aides were so paranoid about losing they commissioned the Watergate crimes that eventually drove Nixon from office.
Before the final election against Sen. George McGovern, there was another serious threat to Nixon's re-election strategy. It was Gov. George Wallace.
Wallace was a threat to Nixon's Southern strategy, a cynical appeal to racism that continues to poison Republican politics to this day.
During the years when racist Southern Democratic senators filibustered against civil rights legislation, Republicans, the party of Lincoln, supported civil rights.
The Republican Party actually had a healthy liberal wing led by New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, whose family fortune helped support historically black colleges in the South and the civil rights activities of the Rev. Martin Luther King.
That all changed after Texas Sen. Lyndon Johnson, who aspired to the presidency, engineered his party's conversion in support of civil rights.
Nixon saw the alienation of racist Southern whites from the Democratic Party as an opportunity. Turning his back on his own party's proud history, Nixon openly courted the opponents of civil rights.
Wallace was a direct threat to Nixon's Southern strategy. If Wallace, a segregationist Democrat, got on the national ticket or even attracted enough votes to soften Democratic support for civil rights, it could stop Southern whites from turning to the Republicans.
The political threat to Nixon ended when the assassination attempt cut short Wallace's campaign and put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
But was Bremer a troubled loner who just happened to serve Nixon's interest, or -- as conspiracy theorists suspected of Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan and James Earl Ray in the '60s -- was he a convenient fall guy set up as part of a wider plot?
Some curious evidence in Milwaukee helped fuel such speculation.
As soon as Bremer was ide.jpgied as the shooter, local reporters went to his apartment. They were amazed that, in the case of a man accused of shooting a presidential candidate and three others including a Secret Service agent, they were able to walk right in.
One reporter later said he had never been in a crime-related scene where evidence appeared to be so carefully laid out for the press.
Almost immediately, reporters found a diary, supposedly written by Bremer, in which he described stalking not only Wallace, but also Nixon himself.
Later the diary was published. One particular part caught my attention because I was covering City Hall at the time. That was a section in which Bremer purportedly said he'd originally considered assassinating the mayor of Milwaukee.
In the diary, he said he decided the mayor wasn't important enough. But that's not exactly how he put it. In the diary, Bremer said he concluded the mayor was "just a fat, little noise."
I covered Milwaukee Mayor Henry Maier at the time. He was a man of average height and not noticeably overweight. It seemed like an odd description to be used by anyone from Milwaukee who was familiar with its mayor.
I thought about that later when all those wild Watergate stories started coming out. One of the shadowy figures behind the Watergate burglary was a former CIA agent named E. Howard Hunt. Hunt made money on the side by writing pulp fiction spy thrillers.
Hunt seemed like the perfect guy to write a fictional assassin's diary. During Watergate, it was revealed that Nixon used Hunt and others to forge Kennedy administration memos to discredit the man Nixon hated most, John F. Kennedy, who had defeated him in 1960.
Oh, yeah. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists also claim witnesses saw Hunt in the vicinity of the grassy knoll on Nov. 22, 1963.
It's a good thing nobody believes any of those crazy conspiracy theories.
What a crock. The rat party is the racist party.
You are probably correct in your assumption that Bremer was the typical loser who just wanted to shoot someone famous to give his own pathetic life a sense of importance.
However, you are probably incorrect that Cermak was a second choice in place of FDR. Cermak was shot while near FDR. The assumption has always been that the shooter aimed for FDR, but missed. Other thories suggest that Cermak was the intended target because he was tough on Chicago mobsters. In any, case, Cermak could not have been chosen because he was an easier target than FDR when he was shot while shaking hands with FDR.
“Before you dismiss the idea as preposterous, remember that the president of the United States in 1972 was Richard Nixon.”
I still remember the day I learned Wallace had been shot. My first thought was “Why?” Who would want to kill a candidate who was polling only 3%? I thought the guy who told me was pulling my leg.
ditto's!
The biggest threat to Nixon was Senator Henry M. Jackson who was on his infamous "enemies list." Instead of Jackson the public got the choice of George McGovern vs. Nixon which is exactly what Nixon needed to win every state but Massachusetts. The DemocRAT party has been nutzoid ever since that fateful year...
It's like people who insist on a conspiracy in the Florida election results in 2000. You ask, "Well, how do you know?" and they invariably come back with "Look, the governor was his brother." And they say it as if this logically proved their argument.
He went on to tell why Nixon didn't demand a recount. He didn't feel Kennedy had anything to do with the voting in Chicago or the mix up in Texas.
Chris even said that Nixon didn,t want the country to go through the trouble that would result. — It is what Gore did and Nixon wouldn't do!!!
He went on to tell why Nixon didn't demand a recount. He didn't feel Kennedy had anything to do with the voting in Chicago or the mix up in Texas.
Chris even said that Nixon didn,t want the country to go through the trouble that would result. — It is what Gore did and Nixon wouldn't do!!!
Look for every right wing conspiracy theory ever conceived to be paraded around before next Friday. The Rats want as much dust in the air as possible when Hillary goes on the stand.
JFK won 303 electoral votes, 35 more than needed (268), so Texas by itself (24 electoral votes) or Illinois by itself (27 EV) wouldn't have made the difference. I guess it's impossible to say what the impact of LBJ not being on the ticket would have been in the states that were very close in 1960, such as South Carolina and Hawaii. Without Texas, SC, and Hawaii, JFK would have had the bare minimum needed to win...but because there were some votes cast for Harry F. Byrd, that would have thrown the decision into the House of Representatives. If Nixon had carried both Texas and Illinois, he would have had enough EVs to win.
I remember telling my friend this in 2000. I told her, if Gore was a class act and accepted defeat graciously he could run again in the future and win the Presidency just like Nixon did 8 years after his defeat. But because Gore was such a sore loser infant, he completely blew THAT chance.
That's exactly what I was waiting for; and in the absence of such a morsel I am forced to give this article an F-minus.
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