Rush is soooo happy
by digby
Limbaugh is ecstatic about Trump’s new racist ad and says, “this is what pushing back looks like.”
Anyway, this ad that is running on Trump’s Twitter feed, the Democrats are fit to be tied, ’cause everything in their playbook is old. Everything they relate to is old. They say, “It’s the Willie Horton ad all over again!” The reason they’re worried about it is the Willie Horton was effective, and so is this Trump ad. Murderers are coming into the country. This caravan is not made up of a bunch of innocent young women and children and illegal immigrants in general. It includes gang members and coyotes for the drug cartels and so forth.
We all know what’s going on here.
It’s just one person has the ability and the audacity to call it all out.
Trump is the racist asshole they’ve been waiting for.
By the way, he defends the Willie Horton ad too:
RUSH: That’s Don Lemon there. “Oh, my gosh!” Oh, my gosh. There aren’t any white terrorists in this ad, though, Don. Sorry.
So many of you ask, “What was the Willie Horton ad? What was that?” Let me tell you about Willie Horton was a murdering rapist. He was a prisoner in Massachusetts. The then governor — The Loser, Michael Dukakis — was running for president in 1988, the year this program debuted, and he had a prisoner furlough program.
Dukakis, The Loser, oversaw the prison plan that let Willie Horton out of jail. When he’s out of jail he went in and created mayhem and murder and rape or whatever at a gas station. So the Republicans put together an ad explaining what happened here. It was “the infamous Willie Horton ad.” This is the ad they still can’t get over 30 years later, and they’re still blaming Ailes. Ailes did not make the ad! Roger Ailes did not make it.
He had nothing to do with the Willie Horton ad! Talk about the long shadow. (interruption) The Democrats… (interruption) that’s exactly right! The Democrats brought Willie Horton in a Democrat candidate debate during the primaries! It was some other Democrat that accused Dukakis of being soft on crime by leading these guys out like Willie Horton! The Republicans were not the first to bring Willie Horton up! But they did a commercial.
And it was just right on the money. I mean, it’s exactly what happened. There was nothing made up about it. But they had the mug shot of Willie Horton in the ad, and so that allowed the Democrats to run around and start accusing the Republicans of racism. “How dare you show a picture of Willie Horton?” Well, what are we supposed to do? That’s who he is. “Yeah. But using the mug shot,” as though they don’t do that. “The mug shot? That’s horrible! That’s so racist.”
He’ right about it not being Ailes. I don’t know why people are saying that all over TV today. He also claims he doesn’t remember who really made that ad which is undoubtedly bullshit. It was a Lee Atwater strategy and Floyd Abrams made the ad. (Abrams was behind a whole bunch of Clinton lies during the 90s which Rush eagerly passed on to his rabid Clinton hating audience.)
The first person to mention the Massachusetts furlough program in the 1988 presidential campaign was Al Gore. During a debate before the New York primary, Gore took issue with the furlough program. However, he did not specifically mention the Horton incident or even his name, instead asking a general question about the Massachusetts furlough program.
Republicans eagerly picked up the Horton issue after Dukakis won Democratic nomination. In June 1988, Republican candidate George H. W. Bush seized on the Horton case, bringing it up repeatedly in campaign speeches. Bush’s campaign manager Lee Atwater said, “By the time we’re finished, they’re going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis’ running mate.”
Campaign staffer James Pinkerton returned with reams of material that Atwater told him to reduce to a 3×5 index card, telling him “I’m giving you one thing: You can use both sides of the 3×5 card.” Pinkerton discovered the furlough issue by watching the Felt Forum debate. On May 25, 1988, Republican consultants met in Paramus, New Jersey, holding a focus group of Democrats who had voted for Ronald Reagan in 1984. These focus groups convinced Atwater and the other Republican consultants that they should ‘go negative’ against Dukakis. Further information regarding the furlough came from aide Andrew Card, a Massachusetts native whom President George W. Bush later named as his Chief of Staff.
Over the Fourth of July weekend in 1988, Atwater attended a motorcyclists’ convention in Luray, Virginia. Two couples were talking about the Horton story as featured in the July issue of Reader’s Digest. Atwater joined them without mentioning who he was. Later that night, a focus group in Alabama had turned completely against Dukakis when presented the information about Horton’s furlough. Atwater used this occurrence to argue the necessity of pounding Dukakis about the furlough issue.
Beginning on September 21, 1988, the Americans for Bush arm of the National Security Political Action Committee (NSPAC), under the auspices of Floyd Brown,began running a campaign ad entitled “Weekend Passes”, using the Horton case to attack Dukakis. The ad was run as an independent expenditure, separate from the Bush campaign, which claimed not to have had any role in its production. The ad referred to Horton as “Willie”, although he later said he had always gone by William.
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