Morris: Lehane Behind Dean's 'Political Assassination'

NewsMax ^ | 1/17/04 | Limbacher

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

Acting at the behest of Bill and Hillary Clinton, a senior campaign aide to Gen. Wesley Clark has carried out the "political assassination" of Democratic presidential front-runner Howard Dean, former top Clinton advisor Dick Morris contended late Friday.

"I believe we have witnessed a political assassination of Howard Dean by the Clintons," Morris told Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes" - hours after polls showed that Dean's once formidable lead in Iowa had evaporated.

Morris named Clark communications director Chris Lehane, a former Gore campaign spokesman who cut his teeth as a key operative in the Clinton White House's attack machine.

"Chris Lehane has been the source of a lot of these negative stories [about Dean]," he explained. "He's a vehicle for Clinton feeds."

Morris said that other candidates don't have the resources for the kind of opposition research that Lehane has been carrying out for Gen. Clark, whose campaign is staffed wall-to-wall with Clinton White House veterans.

"The places that have the money for negative research are the Democratic National Committee and the Clintons," said Morris.

On Friday the New York Times detailed Lehane's role in the current campaign, calling him "such a shrewd practitioner of what one admiring strategist called 'the political black arts' that lately, when a negative story appears, rivals point to him."

The Times referred to Lehane as Gen. Clark's "secret weapon" in his campaign's war against Dean and other rivals.

In 2000, it was then-Gore aide Lehane who took an innocuous Republican campaign ad that flashed the word "De-moc-rats" across the screen and turned it into a major scandal.

After Lehane told reporters that the word "rats" was an attempt to use subliminal advertising to smear his party, the story turned up on the front page of the Times and dominated the news cycle for days.

"Chris understands the essential dynamic of politics, which is punch or be punched," Jim Jordan, Sen. John Kerry's former campaign manager, told the paper.

But some say Lehane's tactics against Howard Dean go further than that.

"Like criminals, most good political operatives have certain M.O.'s," one unidentified Lehane "friend" told the Times. "He's very aggressive and he's very thorough and very good at getting reporters what they need to do a hatchet job on your opponent."

[Mo1]

What we need is some dirt to be dredged up about Lehane. Keep him busy that way

Yea, but what would be good, is for one of the Dems to down Chrissy. If they don't stop him, Lehane we totally destroy them and any chance they have to be the nominee

[prairiebreeze]

I wonder if they are working on that already....

Prairie

[WOSG]

I feel Dick Morris' pain.

The Clintons are like Herpes. They never go away.

[johnb838]

"De-moc-rats"

It wasn't even Democrats. It was Bureaucrats. The line was "Who decides? Bureaucrats decide". The way the MTV-style editing worked out, the word RATS appeared on its own for a fraction. That's the neatest part -- they weren't even talking about democrats right then and with Lehane's whining they still managed to adopt the new nickname. When will they change their aymbol?

[Jim Noble]

I had thought she would wait until October, and that his real life (as opposed to his political life) was at risk.

But no, they have decided to eliminate him now, and bloodlessly at that.

He's better off, in the long run. Bet it stings like a bastard now, though.

[Poincare]

The Dean supporters, especially the GLBT ones, have a great deal of energy and money invested in Howie and if they feel that their political savior was brought down by a Klinton operative we just may see another left alternative candidate--a la Nader--perhaps Dean himself.

The Dems are constantly finding new ways to self-destruct.

[nathanbedford]

I think Morris is right, The Clintons are behind this, but why?

Do they fear that Dean, if nominated, could actually win? I think not. Everybody accepts that the Clintons want a loss in in '04 to assure a nomination for an open oval office in '08, so who is most likely to lose? Let's eliminate Braun, Kochinich, the Good Reverend, and Lieberman as too out of it. That leaves the Breck Girl who will not be nominated absent a bolt from the heavens. Clark, Dean and Kerry remain. Of these three the most formidable candidate is clearly Kerry; he has the war record to match Clark, and gravitas to beat Clark's weirdness. Dean is too far left, too angry and against the war so he is probably unelectable. So the Clintons should be content with Clark (reportedly their stealth candidate) or Dean but their "asssination" efforts against Dean have the effect of boosting Kerry toward the nomination - the one guy with any chance of actually beating Bush. Why?

Consider the other side of the equation, why have other leading Rats, Gore, Harken, Bradley, and probably Carter gotten behind Dean? Either it is because they are true believers who find themselves swept up by the charisma of Dean and blinded to his deficiencies, or something else is afoot. These guys are pros and cynical pros at that. To believe that they support Dean out of principle is to reveal oneself to be as naive as one must believe these old pols to be. No, the motivitation must lie elsewhere.

I submit that we are witnessing a war for control of the Democrat party which is being waged by proxy. These pols are aware that they are lining up against the Clinton's proxy. Why are they doing so? The stakes, assuming a Rat defeat in the general election, are the control of the Party and the Party purse until '08. Clinton controls that purse until someone's nomination is assured. If Dean is nominated, the Clintons clearly lose control of the party. Dean is not going to put on kneepads for the Clintons. If Clark is nominated, the Clintons retain the puppet strings. If Kerry is nominted it is not clear.

What is clear is that a large segment of the ESTABLISHMENT of the rat party is lining up against the Clintons, the President they jumped over the cliff for in the impeachment. What has changed since then?

Whatever is going on is very serious, else the Clintons would not risk the nomination of Kerry, the most electable rat. And the ESTABLISHMENT would not risk the deadly venomous wrath of the Clintons for mere principle.

[nathanbedford]

Whoops, forgot to mention Gephardt. He fits into the Kerry mold, not quite as electable, but clearly part of the Party establishment.

[Mustang]

The Toon's, Lehane and company learned well from Nixon's "dirty Tricks" machine.

One may surmise Lehane is Segretti's clone. But you'll never read the comparison mentioned in the lame-stream press. How cheeky of them. The power of the press is not what they report, rather what they knowingly neglect to report.

Mustang sends from "Malpaso News"

[Turin_Turambar]

Here's the answer to your riddle. The Clintons don't believe in leaving things to chance. At FR we like to think that "Dean can't win." But polls say otherwise. He probably wouldn't win, of course, but Hilary doesn't play "probably" with "her" presidency.
Initially, Clark's job was to weaken all of the electable candidates (steal some southern states from Gephardt and Edwards, steal some vets from Kerry). This would result in a long, expensive and bloody season that would mean an underfunded and disunited general election candidate. This still might work. Now they're not sure, though, because Dean had a lot of momentum, so they had to cut him down to size and make sure he was unelectable by boosting his negatives. Besides, some of the Clintons' victims -- like Gore and Bradley -- were on to them and trying to put Dean (who's less vulnerable to Clark) on the path to victory.

The only sure way to rig a fight is to have a patsy, who'll take a fall. So they wouldn't mind if Clark actually got the nomination, and are now actively pursuing this as the safer bet, even though at the outset they didn't believe this was actually necessary.

[CyberAnt]

Awesome. I had a wood tick when I was a child at Girl Scout Camp. Nasty things.

You are so right "tics" is an apt description!!

[Gritty]

Watching the Democrats battle for contol of the Party is like watching Stalin and Trotsky square off.

In the end, somebody is going to have an ice ax in his head.

[Verginius Rufus]

The 1976 DUI story nearly determined the outcome of the election--until then it looked like Bush would win with a comfortable margin.

There was a theory advanced by someone on FR at the time, that the fact of the DUI incident became known to the Democrats because of the FBI files.

Think about it: no one used it against George W. Bush in either of his races for governor in Texas. It was so old that normal snooping around the courthouse wouldn't have uncovered it. But it could have found its way into George H. W. Bush's FBI file when he first ran for Vice President, when the information was fairly new. Since neither Hillary nor Lehane will ever tell what they know, the only way to discover the truth would be if Bush 41 cooperated with an investigation by requesting his FBI file, but that's not going to happen.

[nathanbedford]

I agree Clark was a pasty just as Mosley-Braun was the not - Sharpton patsy. I think the Clintons would have been at least more content with anyone but Dean. Clearly, he would not share the Purse with them.

[JusPasenThru]

What a great idea! I bet that would get Rush's and Sean's attention in a big hurry.

[gg188]

If I were Dean, I would be very leery of all the various airplanes you have to jump in daily (some days several times) on all those campaign stops. Who could know what had been going on with a particular aircraft in the hours before Dean's use of it---who had access to plane, who "serviced" it, who loaded the baggage....

[Lancey Howard]

I hope Dean does everything he can to "poison the well" so that his supporters will stay home rather than vote for Clark, should Clark win the nomination. If Dean won't go down to the bottom of the toilet to fight the Clintons (and their surrogates) where they live, then he doesn't deserve the nomination. He better start getting himself dirty.

[Salvation]

And Bush will beat whoever the Clintons run for President.