http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0629-22.htm

Published on Wednesday, June 29, 2005 by the Star Tribune
(Minneapolis, MN)

Put Rove's Speech in Context of McCarthyism
by E.J. Dionne Jr.

In the 1950s, the right wing attacked liberals for being Communists.
In 2005, Karl Rove has attacked liberals for being therapists. Thus is
born a kinder and gentler form of McCarthyism.

Named after the late Sen. Joe McCarthy, who never let the facts get in
the way of his lust to charge liberals with sedition, McCarthyism has
come to mean "guilt by association."

What gave McCarthyism its power was that the senator from Wisconsin
did not invent the danger posed to the United States by Soviet
communism. The Soviet Union was a real threat and there were real
Communist spies working in America.

What made McCarthy and his allies so insidious was their eagerness to
level the "soft on communism" charge against even staunchly
anti-Communist liberals. One of them was Secretary of State Dean
Acheson, an architect of Harry Truman's tough policy of containing
Soviet power. In the 1952 presidential campaign, Richard Nixon pounded
Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson for earning a "Ph.D from Dean
Acheson's College of Cowardly Communist Containment."

The McCarthyites' real enemies were not Communists but the New Deal
liberals who had dominated American politics for 20 years. The
McCarthy crowd was willing to divide the nation at a time of grave
international peril if that's what it took to beat the liberals.

Rove's instantly famous speech last week to the New York state
Conservative Party should be read in light of this history and not be
written off as a cheap, one-time partisan attack. On the contrary, the
address by Rove, President Bush's most important adviser, provides the
outlines of a sophisticated strategy aimed at making liberals and
Democrats all look soft on terrorism.

Here are the key passages: "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and
the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the
9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and
understanding for our attackers. In the wake of 9/11, conservatives
believed it was time to unleash the might and power of the United
States military against the Taliban; in the wake of 9/11, liberals
believed it was time to submit a petition. ... Conservatives saw what
happened to us on 9/11 and said: We will defeat our enemies. Liberals
saw what happened to us and said: We must understand our enemies."

Liberals and Democrats were enraged by Rove because virtually every
officeholding liberal and Democrat closed ranks behind President Bush
on 9/11. They endorsed the use of force against the terrorists and,
when the time came, strongly backed the war in Afghanistan.

But Rove knows how to play this game. The only evidence he adduces for
his therapy charge is a petition in which the current executive
director of MoveOn.org called for "moderation and restraint" in the
wake of 9/11. Rove then slides smoothly from the attack on MoveOn to
attacks on Michael Moore and Howard Dean. Finally, Rove tosses in an
assault on Sen. ***** Durbin, D-Ill., for his statement that an FBI
report on the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay might remind
Americans of the practices of Nazi and Communist dictatorships.

In the ensuing controversy, Rove's defenders cleverly sought to
pretend that there was nothing partisan about Rove's speech. "Karl
didn't say 'the Democratic Party,' " insisted Ken Mehlman, the
Republican national chairman. "He said 'liberals.' " It must have been
purely accidental that one of the "liberals" mentioned was the
Democratic national chairman and another was the Senate Democratic
whip. It must also have been accidental that both of them, like most
other liberals, supported the war in Afghanistan, not therapy. At the
time, Durbin called the war "essential."

On Friday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan narrowed the Rove
attack even more. McClellan found it "puzzling" that Democrats were
"coming to the defense of liberal organizations like MoveOn.org and
people like Michael Moore," when, in fact, Democrats were coming to
their own defense. McClellan also ignored what Mehlman had conceded
the day before -- and what the text of Rove's remarks plainly shows:
that Rove was attacking liberals generally, not just these two
targets.

That's how guilt-by-association works. Make a charge and then -- once
your attack is out there -- pretend that your words have been
misinterpreted. Split your opponents. Put them on the defensive. Force
them to say things like: "No, we're not soft on terrorism," or, "I'm
not that kind of liberal." Once this happens, the attacker has already
won.

Respectable opinion treats Rove's speech as just another partisan
flap. It's much more. It's the reincarnation of a style of politics
that turns political opponents into traitors or dupes who are soft on
the nation's enemies. Welcome back to the '50s.

© 2005 Star Tribune

But Rove knows how to play this game. The only evidence he adduces for
his therapy charge is a petition in which the current executive
director of MoveOn.org called for "moderation and restraint" in the
wake of 9/11.