The most influential hitman in American politics
by digby
Did you know that the man who brought the infamous case of Citizens United vs the FEC to the Supreme Court is now teamed up with Michelle Malkin and they’re making a movie together? Well they are. And it’s a doozy. it’s about how liberal billionaire potheads have turned Colorado into a dystopian hellhole by stopping drilling and getting everyone stoned. Seriously.
Anyway, I thought it was good time to revisit the story of David Bossie the conservative activist who runs Citizens United and has had a more profound effect on American politics than almost any other wingnut. I wrote about him for Salon today:
You have to wonder how many people in America, even those who are well informed, make the connection between the notorious Supreme Court decision that unleashed unprecedented campaign spending and the slimy political assassination outfit called Citizens United that brought the case? It’s not that people of low character have never succeeded in winning Supreme Court cases before. But it’s difficult to find a group with less integrity than this one.
You may recall that the case itself was about a film called “Hillary: the Movie,” which was produced by Citizens United in anticipation of the 2008 election and which the FEC ruled was not a movie at all but rather a 90-minute campaign commercial that was “susceptible of no other interpretation than to inform the electorate that Senator Clinton is unfit for office, that the United States would be a dangerous place in a President Hillary Clinton world, and that viewers should vote against her.” This designation as an advertisement ran afoul of elements of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation and Theodore Olson, Citizens United’s attorney, filed a case against the FEC claiming its First Amendment rights had been violated. And the rest is history.
What many people may not know, however, is the history of Citizens United. It goes all the way back to the 1980s when it was created by the notorious hatchet man from Arkansas, Floyd Brown of Willie Horton fame. In 1992, in anticipation of a flood of juicy opportunities for character assassination of fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton, he brought on David Bossie, a young and ambitious GOP operative. Their joint effort was a massive and instant success with the media, which used it as a major “source” for years. As early as 1994 some media critics were concerned about the group’s allure among the press corps. Trudy Lieberman wrote an exposé of the group called “Churning Whitewater” for the Columbia Journalism Review, although nobody in the mainstream media seemed particularly concerned.
It was a shocking expose actually, which I only read years later after the scandal mongering was in full effect. In just a few years Bossie would be very publicly fired for doctoring tapes and transcripts as the “chief investigator” for Congressman Dan Burton. You’d think that would be the end of it. But he was so popular among the DC press corps and had the benefit of all that wingnut welfare so he made a very quick comeback.
Anyway, read the whole thing to get a taste of just how influential a garden variety character assassin can become in American politics. Somebody ought to make a movie about it.
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