Dave Weigel at Slate is reporting from Virginia Tea Party Patriots Convention, where the veterans of the Wingnut Wurlitzers’ Clenis offensive are oozing out to infect a new generation:
In the 1996, former FBI agent Gary Aldrich published Unlimited Access: An FBI Agent Inside the Clinton White House. It was an account of his days running background checks for the Clinton White House, and like every pre-2001 book accusing the Clintons of strange things, it was a hit. Aldrich faded into the background after that, but he’s emerged at the Tea Party Patriots Convention, under the banner of his Patrick Henry Center, as a punchy political veteran who can teach activists how to avoid being screwed by the media.
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“This is a typical liberal,” said Aldrich at his morning session, pointing to a slide of Hannibal Lecter. “They’re some of the nastiest people you could possibly imagine.” He switched up the Lecter photo with photos of enemy reporters, like Chris Matthews, “perky”Katie Couric, and Rachel Maddow, pausing briefly to make fun of Maddow’s haircut. And on the way into the room, he said, he browbeat a reporter for filming an interview with a goofy-looking tea party activist who was carrying a gun. “That’s what’s going to show up on the nightly news,” he said. His audience nodded their heads knowingly.
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And so Aldrich’s advice to activists fit cleanly under the heading of “ways to seem paranoid.” Don’t travel alone, he said: He himself had advised a prominent Tea Party leader to stop traveling solo around the country. Choose friends wisely, because allies can betray you and leak to reporters. Demand conditions from the media before agreeing to interviews. Also, learn to use a gun, especially if you live in an open carry state. (The friction between this and his previous statement was not noted.)…
What was that quote about “first as tragedy, then as farce”?
arguingwithsignposts
Eerie. I was recently watching a Tea Party activist speak to a gathering of journalists, and this individual brought a person along with her who sat in the front row during the entire discussion.
KG
A reasonable person would, I think, understand the lesson of this to be: don’t let the crazy people define you; hold your side to the highest standards of reasonableness.
Instead, their response seems to be: don’t talk to them, ever.
gnomedad
I guess we’ve entered the post-Godwin era.
Amir_Khalid
Another choice piece of advice:
When you go for a job interview, do you have a right to “demand conditions”, to dictate beforehand what the interviewer may or may not ask? No. The interviewer would have every right to kick you out of the place.
Because that’s exactly what is happening whenever a candidate for public office faces the media: he or she is being interviewed for a job, not as a celebrity. and should behave accordingly.
slyder
The “tragedy/farce” quote is most famously in Karl Marx’s The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Marx says that he recalls the quote from Hegel, and applies it to compare the revolutions that brought to power Napoleon I and his nephew Napoleon III.
James E. Powell
The right-wingers have, so far, been more successful when they only talk with other right-wingers. Right now, simply by getting only right-wingers to the polls, they are poised to take both houses of congress in the low turnout midterms. They only need to avoid looking like deranged idiots in front of the small number of independents who vote in midterms.
WereBear
Yeah, but I don’t know if they can manage that. Honestly.
Ricardo Cabeza
“This is a typical liberal,” said Aldrich at his morning session, pointing to a slide of Hannibal Lecter. “They’re some of the nastiest people you could possibly imagine.” He switched up the Lecter photo with photos of enemy reporters, like Chris Matthews, “perky” Katie Couric, and Rachel Maddow, pausing briefly to make fun of Maddow’s haircut.
Why do I get the feeling that Gary Aldrich would have happily broken serious law while an active FBI agent because of his mental instability about liberals? Hannibal aside, I don’t think ‘nastiest’ quite means what he thinks it does.
Further I think I can make the case that Lecter is more like most Cheneys.
By contrast, I bet he thinks Karl Rove is one the most cleanest, most pure individuals in the world.
Cacti
Aldrich sounds like a typical “well meaning Republican” that I heard about this morning. An all around decent fellow who just differs in policy details. You know the type. Nice guys like…
Richard Nixon
Spiro Agnew
Bush I & II
Newt Gingrich
Sarah Palin
G. Gordon Liddy
Oliver North
Jesse Helms
Trent Lott
Strom Thurmond
Tom DeLay
etc., etc.
Davis X. Machina
Listen to this shit, go look at who’s on the House Judiciary Committee now, never mind after the elections, and ask yourself, if given a majority, will they send to the floor at least one article of impeachment before or after July 1, 2011?
I’ll take the under.
We’re boned.
eemom
I have taken as little notice as possible that this event took place today in the state in which I have the misfortune to reside.
However, I did catch an amusing headline in the WaPo Metro section about how the organizers felt rather chagrined by the fact that so many mainstream Virginia republicans — McDonnell, Bolling, and of course fucking Cuccinnelli — were going to be speakers.
Apparently they are worried about their grassrooty goodness being compromised by “The Establishment.”
Yep, true revolutionaries, these teafolk. Real tear it down and start againers.
Joshua
Maybe their image would be better if they weren’t all goofy-looking gun toters?
quaint irene
Oh , is this the asshole who asserted that the Clinton’s were involved in cocaine trafficking?
James E. Powell
@WereBear:
I don’t know either, but I think it is because voters who identify as independent are really just very disengaged from politics. They tend to vote their mood. They disregard most statements relating to policies, either because they don’t understand them or because they consider them standard campaign bullshit that they are free to disregard.
That any sensible person not wedded to the Republican party can consider voting for Republicans after the disasters of the Bush/Cheney Junta is something I will never understand.
MD Rackham
Aldrich is the one who claimed that the Clintons decorated their Christmas tree with penis ornaments, right?
No issues with this guy.
General Stuck
@Davis X. Machina:
Well, for sure there will be investigations out the ya hooo, but whether the wingnuts learned anything from Clinton’s impeachment, or not, remains to be seen. I wouldn’t bet against it, but the same roadblock to their wet dream of getting rid of Obama will befall them. Or, it takes a senate conviction which requires a two thirds majority.
The GOP is currently running on desperation as a long term viable party that will remain electable given demographic changes, and is mired in an ideological froth fueled by teatard energy. I suspect the House wingnuts will not be able to control themselves, and will step again into a trap of their own making, spending the peoples time in an awful recession to witch hunt a dem president that they won’t be able to get rid of with mere impeachment.
But given the fact that the white majority in this country is again willing to vote them back in power, portends a country in a full nervous breakdown. So who knows. One thing for sure, no new laws of any consequence are likely to be passed, and it will be interesting to see the reaction of the left, when Obama does not play along like Clinton and shuts down requested information on about everything up to and maybe including the presnits bowel movements. Al la Bush his last two years. Will the left take the side of so called principle and continue their “worse than Bush jihad” against Obama, or will they rally to Obama, like they did Clinton but have shown no inclination for same with Obama. Since they have already decided, imo, that Obama does not measure up to a manly man white liberal lion, I think they will side with the wingnuts. And I can’t wait to read Greenwald’s scratchings on the circus to come. SECRECY. oh noes. Bush like etc…. etc….
uloborus
@James E. Powell:
Voters who identify as ‘independent’ are the Tea Partiers this cycle, not swing vote moderates. The Tea Partiers honestly think they’re not Republicans, and they distort polls wildly.
patrick II
I find that especially rich coming from a guy who made his name writing a book that other FBI agents inside the White House would find to be indiscreet, unprofessional and a betrayal to the ostensible principles of the bureau.
scav
Speaking of tea, looks like some of the tea partiers are now devoted to diving into the harbor and loading the darjeeling back on deck: they’re establishing links with the extreme right in the UK.
jrosen
The quote on tragedy and farce comes from Karl Marx, commenting on the accession to power of Napoleon’s nephew who “ruled” France as Napoleon III for about 18 years. (He was the genius behind the idea of Maximilian’s “imperial” adventure in Mexico while the US was settling the Civil War. That didn’t wotk out too well either, especially for Max, who faced a firing squad and lost.)
Now it’s out, you are a closet Marxist! Watch out, the Mad Hatter’s of Alice’s Tea Party are gonna get you.
Davis X. Machina
@General Stuck: There will be non-Blue Dog, Democratic votes to impeach, on precisely the grounds you specify — and the casters of those votes will be lionized in the usual places.