Tricky Barack meets Tricky Dick

Posted by hpayne on May 14, 2013

Obama

Pat Caddell, the youngest Democrat on Richard Nixon’s Enemies List thanks to his staff position on George McGovern’s 1972 Democratic presidential campaign, knows dirty politics when he sees it.

“We have not had a White House where the incumbent tried to affect the other side’s primary since Nixon,” Caddell, now 62 and one of America’s most respected political analysts, told me last year after the Obama campaign’s unusual intervention in the Michigan Republican primary to try and affect an upset of Mitt Romney. “On the 40th anniversary year of Watergate, that’s worth pointing out. I am a Democrat and I am offended by it. There is a reason parties hold their own primaries to choose their own candidates.”

The Nixon parallels multiplied last week after the shocking revelations of House Oversight Committee hearings into the Benghazi cover-up and an IRS admission that it had targeted tea party groups during the 2012 election. Michigan primary interventions, enemies lists, Benghazi talking points, FAA sequester delays . . . while not illegal, the Obama administration’s actions portray a campaign-obsessed White House that sees every event as a partisan, political opportunity.

Tricky Dick, meet Tricky Barack.

The testimony of three State Department whistleblowers in Benghazi suggest election politics were paramount — to the point that the administration lied about the al-Qaida attack for fear it would compromise the president’s campaign theme of winning the War on Terror. Then came the IRS revelation targeting tea party groups, an eerie echo of Tricky Dick’s IRS intimidation tactics. That in turn was a reminder of an Obama enemies list that surfaced in April 2012 of eight Romney donors shamed by the Obama campaign for alleged legal irregularities.

“When you have the power of the presidency — the power of the IRS — what you have effectively done is put these guys’ names up on ‘Wanted’ posters in government offices,” former U.S. solicitor general Theodore Olson, told The Wall Street Journal.

From Michigan to Washington, the Nixonian echo is causing bipartisan unease.

“For anyone over 50, this news couldn’t help but stir memories of Richard Nixon’s Political Enemies Project,” wrote former Michigan Democratic Congresswoman Lynn Rivers in The Detroit News.com Monday. “To use Dan Rather’s ‘duck test,’ the IRS probe of ‘hostile’ ideological groups looks like, swims like, and quacks like government dirty tricks.”

“The IRS has admitted that its agents intimidated conservative groups based on their political beliefs,” says Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Brighton. “I don’t care if you’re a conservative, a liberal, a Democrat or a Republican, this should send a chill up your spine.”

The American Center for Law and Justice represents tea party groups from 18 states concerned about IRS harassment, though none are in Michigan – perhaps because Michigan groups have not pursued fundraising strategies requiring non-profit IRA status. Political IRS probes were made famous by a Nixon administration memo that sought to “maximize . . . our incumbency in dealing with persons known to be active in their opposition to our Administration; stated a bit more bluntly — how we can use the (IRS) to screw our political enemies.”

Obama’s campaign-style tactics have continued this year as he exploited sequester cuts — targeting the public with flight delays and canceled White House tours as part of a Republican blame game.

In the February 2012 Republican Michigan primary, Democratic consultant Caddell called out the Nixon-like activity that attempted to influence a Santorum upset of frontrunner Mitt Romney. Consistent with what he called “Obama’s Chicago hard-knuckle politics,” Caddell cited $250,000 in Obama Super Pac ads targeting Romney, an Obama speech to the UAW on the day of the vote, Obama allies writing anti-Romney op-eds in Detroit newspapers and Democratic operatives like state Democratic Party chair Mark Brewer urging Democrats to vote Santorum.

“Why doesn’t anyone hold this president accountable for this?” Caddell demanded at the time. “Barack Obama says he’s for a new kind of politics.”

This week, more people are asking the same question.

 

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