Posted on 05/12/2002 8:53:55 AM PDT by kattracks
Ever read the book "Beggars and Choosers"? This can be a winning strategy. Now what you really should be wondering is why the Bush administration hasn't even bothered to investigate the crimes that we KNOW the Clinton administration and democRATS committed. THAT is a LOSING strategy.
Hmmm....what did Bush do....barbeque a building full of innocent women and children?
May 13, 2002, Speech by Jack Thompson to American Forum, Biltmore Hotel, Coral Gables, Florida: "Governor Reno?"
Many of us have friends and loved ones who, at one time or another, have been involved in behaviors that been harmful, and have gone to them and said, "You’re hurting yourself. You’re hurting others. I care enough about you to plead with you to stop."
In the Florida gubernatorial race of 1998, I stood on US-1 and other thoroughfares with signs for Jeb Bush. I contributed money to his campaign. I was there on election day and spoke with Jeb moments before he cast his vote at Gulliver School with his wife Columba. I wanted him to win that day. I want him to win again, this November.
Why? For two reasons. First, I’m a Republican. I stood in my fourth-grade playground on election day in November 1960, before going into what in Bay Village, Ohio, we called "homeroom," with a "Nixon for President" sign. Nine years old and already part of the vast right-wing conspiracy.
Second, Jeb Bush’s opponent will be the person who was the most corrupt Attorney General in the history of the United States.
My Vanderbilt Law School classmate Al Gore might as well have been describing Janet Reno when he used his Buddhism-inspired phrase "no controlling legal authority" to dodge the appointment of his very own independent counsel. Janet has always been controlling, but there is nothing legal about that control, and she lacks all authority in exercising it.
I have granted probably five hundred radio interviews about Janet Reno since the day she was nominated by Bill Clinton to be the first woman U.S. Attorney General in February 1993. In nearly every one of those interviews, whose hosts have included the nationally-syndicated Bob Dornan, Ollie North, Bob Grant, Alan Colmes, Mancow, and others, I have nearly always been asked: Isn’t this really sour grapes for losing to Janet Reno in 1988 as her Republican opponent for Dade State Attorney? It is always hard to know one’s heart, but my friend of twenty-six years, my brother not in blood but in every other sense, Mike Thompson, can tell you that if this is sour grapes, then it is the first instance ever of grapes souring on the vine before the harvest, even before they were ripe. I identified Reno’s lies, pathologies, hypocrisies, and shredding of the Constitution before I lost to her. I have tried to be consistent. I have certainly been persistent.
I am a Presbyterian, one of God’s "frozen chosen." I believe God foreordains what comes to pass. I am humbled by the notion, the possibility, that for fifteen years He has had me speak the truth about Janet Reno. Harry Truman, when asked about his "Give ‘em Hell" nickname, said this: "I give them the truth, and it feels like Hell." I’ve given the liberal media the truth about Janet Reno for a long time, and it has felt, to them, like Hell because in identifying Reno as a public nuisance I have identified them as willing accomplices.
Janet Reno has repeatedly said that her role model for public life is President Harry Truman. She says the first time she stayed up all night was to listen as a ten-year-old to the election returns in 1948 in the race between Dewey and Truman.
Janet proposes to be Truman in this race, coming from way back in the polls, to beat as did Truman, a complacent, over-confident Republican Governor.
There is one man who stands between Janet Reno and her final dream which will be our nightmare. He is Jeb Bush. I now give you the unconventional wisdom. Jeb can lose this race. Reno is not a long shot. She is an even shot. I am here to explain why she is, and in so doing, I aim not to hurt this good man, but rather to help him, whether he wants to be helped or not. Jeb sees the light at the end of the tunnel. It is a freight train named Reno.
The first part of my analysis as to how she can pull a Truman on a latter-day Dewey is a prediction I made last week on Bob Dornan’s national radio show that has, in the last few days, already come true. And by the way, as an aside, Bob Dornan, whom I consider as adroit a political analyst in America, agrees with the analysis you are about tp hear of how Jeb can lose this race.
I told former Congressman "B-1 Bob Dornan," a man whose devotion to the Bush family, as Mike Thompson can tell you, is unsurpassed, that Reno would "go negative" on Jeb Bush early and often. In other words, Reno would turn the campaign into a vicious, fact-free zone of vitriol of personal attacks on Jeb Bush. Reno knows she cannot win this race on the issues, because the majority of Florida’s voters, regardless of voter registration, which is still majority Democrat, are to the right on the political continuum of where Janet is.
So, if you can’t win on the subject of the issues, change the subject, and on this past Thursday, Janet did that, big-time, as Dick Cheney would say.
For those of you who may not have heard, Janet Reno was in St. Petersburg Thursday. She was talking about what much of the nation was talking about, the disappearance of little Rilya Wilson while supposedly in the care of the Department of Children and Families. Who, according to Janet, is to blame for the girl’s disappearance? Jeb Bush. But she didn’t stop there in blaming Bush for the failures of a Democrat-created behemoth bureaucracy.
Janet Reno actually called for the appointment of a special prosecutor, the state equivalent of an independent council, to investigate not the child’s disappearance but Jeb Bush’s running of DCF. Reno said there were 347 other missing DCF children. When asked to name a single one, she could not. But that did not stop this woman who would not name an independent council on Chinagate and Buddhist Templegate from asking for one on what she would love the media to call Jebgate.
Governor Bush, I believe the same day, was here in Miami at Jackson Memorial Hospital. He faced the media. He was asked a legitimate question he knew he would be asked about the fact that the woman he appointed to head DCF has been alleged to have fraudulently used her former husband’s credit cards to run up thousands of dollars in unauthorized debt. The fair question goes to this Bush appointee’s honesty and credibility in one setting, which might be probative of whether she is being honest as to the Rilya Wilson matter. What did Jeb say in response to this legitimate question? Instead of taking the opportunity to point out what he has done to reform that Department and make kids safer , instead of pointing out that at least he hasn’t, unlike his leading critic, used tanks and a nerve gas banned by international treaty to trigger the killing of 28 innocent children in Waco, he did something stupid. He pronounced such a question "trash politics" and turned on his heel and walked out of that media-filled room.
This was a mistake. It sends the signal that Reno got to him, pushed his buttons, forced him to fold. It shows Jeb can be intimidated. Now that she knows she can do that, Reno will do it again, and again, and again, right up until November.
What other buttons will she push? Janet Reno, when she danced off to Washington, hand-picked her first lieutenant to be her successor, Katherine Fernandez Rundle. In the 1980s, the Miami Herald, in a rare moment of truth, said this: "Reno and Rundle aren’t prosecutors. They’re two frustrated social workers."
Let me translate. These two women aren’t interested in legitimate law enforcement; they’re interested in social engineering, and the ends always, the Constitution be damned, justify the means.
Mike, what was it, eight or nine years ago, that I stood at this very podium and told American Forum, and by videotape of that speech thousands of Americans who saw that speech of the illegal things Reno did to me to make sure I would not win my 1988 race against her even though I knew I could not win. Reno used law enforcement to surveil me. I am certain also that I was wiretapped. Reno was trying to get the goods on me if she needed them, just in case. I am somewhat embarrassed to say that the goods were not there. After all, I indicated already that I am a Presbyterian. Borrrrrrrrring.
But the Rundle seedling did not fall far from that great big Cypress from the Everglades. The Reno/Rundle tag team has run the criminal justice system in this county since 1978, twenty-four years. When Reno was nominated to be A.G., the Herald’s resident self-styled liberal genius, Carl Hiaasen wrote a column entitled "Reno Has Spunk, But Does She Have Spine," in which he proved that Reno took a pass on nearly every case of public corruption that came her office’s way. The inference to be drawn, because it was the implication made, is that Reno saw her power as prosecutor as one she could rightly abuse by protecting her powerful friends.
I would suggest that the opposite side of that abuse coin is to use your office to punish your enemies. Reno and Rundle have a dossier on the Miami-Dade County Bush family which lives right here in Pinecrest in Miami-Dade County that would choke the horse that just won the Kentucky Derby. I know of some of the family’s vulnerabilities in this regard, and I’m not going to repeat them. Janet already knows them. Trust me. If I know them, she knows them, and more.
What Janet will do, either directly, or through her backchannel surrogates in Rundle’s office or in her campaign apparatus, is spread via a friendly press certain rumors, half-truths, and downright lies, so that Jeb will be reeling from a a scandal a week about Jeb and the Bush family. Facts will not matter. Plausible lies will carry the day.
The issues, then, of this campaign will not be the issues. The only real issue will be the respective characters of the two candidates. Not the reality. The perceptions. That is what Reno’s call for a special prosecutor to investigate Jeb is all about. She has flung some waste product on the wall, and it has already stuck. More to follow.
The more inflammatory and unprovable scandals that Reno comes up with will be put into the public domain, as I say, by "anonymous sources," and if they are from Rundle’s hatchet people in the State Attorney’s office, then the media will be able to call them "highly-placed government officials." This is how Clinton did it to his enemies. You can bet that Janet’s inherent corruption was honed to a rapier’s edge while serving at the feet of the Presidential master, surrounded by the Lanny Davises, James Carvilles, Sidney Blumenthals, and Paul Begalas, the spinmeisters whom Josef Goebbels would have envied.
Reno is going to give Jeb Hell, and by the time this election is over, she will be proud of her new name "Give ‘em Hell, Janet." The more Hellish and more personal it gets, the more she can play the role of sweet old lady, just wanting to "do what’s best for the children," smiling that sweet smile, the smile Dr. Mengele must have worn when he performed his experiments for the "good of the children."
What must Jeb Bush do to win a campaign which is not going to be on the issues but on the persons, on their character. He must fight fire with fire. All of his instincts, however, go the other way. His brother, George, looks like his father and acts like his take-no-prisoners mother. And that is a compliment to both the mother and the son. Inside Dubya’s velvet glove is an iron fist, and he is not afraid to use it. He used it on John McCain, when his entire political career was at risk, as he hammered Democrat wannabe McCain in the South Carolina primary right into the ground.
In election 2000, in the last two debates with AlGore, Bush carved up this stiff and even seemed to enjoy it. He was tough. He went for the jugular. And when push came to shove here in Florida, as AlGore and David Boies tried to steal this election, Bush shoved back and gave better than he got. And in the immediate aftermath of September 11, George W. Bush became Presidential. The crowning moment was his speech to the joint session of Congress, but the moment when we first glimpsed we had a leader who was a man was when this heretofore discounted son stood on the rubble, and with bullhorn in hand, totally unscripted, beyond the reach of this White House idiot Karl Rove, said this: "I hear you, America hears you, and those who destroyed these buildings will hear all of us soon."
Jeb Bush, on the other hand, looks like his mother and acts like his father. That is a compliment only as to his appearance. Who can forget that, upon assuming the Presidency, George Herbert Walker Bush pledged to make this a "kinder and gentler nation." It was a dig at the political styleof Ronald Reagan. And Nancy Reagan, we are told, has never forgiven him the dig. Nor should she. If Hubert Humphrey was the "Happy Warrior," then Ronald Reagan was the Happy Victor. Reagan mixed it up as well as any President has, and he knew there was no substitute for victory, in any venue.
By contrast, President Bush’s unilateral partisan disarmament produced the tax deal that broke his "read my lips’ pledge to his Party’s faithful. It may not have sealed his fate, but melted the wax to do so.
What did seal Jeb’s father’s fate, and for our discussion here, the most important failure of the Bush political family’s history, was George HW Bush’s decision not to "go negative"—"wouldn’t be prudent"---on Presidential challenger, the dirtbag, Bill Clinton.
In 1992, Rush Limbaugh and others were saying that "character matters, it is all that matters." But George Bush would not say the things that Limbaugh and others were saying about Clinton, and so what they were saying was discounted as being mean, beside the point, and simply marketing scandal to build a radio show.
We now know, based upon a dispassionate analysis of the Presidential race of 1992, that Bush was closing in on Clinton in the polls, that Perot’s numbers were falling as well as Clinton’s, and that if Bush had made the case, convincingly, that this rogue from Arkansas was not just a liberal in sheep’s clothing but also that he was not to be trusted, in matters of character, then Bush would have won.
But George Bush, like his son Jeb who has inherited his temperament, could not bring himself to point out Clinton’s negatives and therefore since the undecideds in the electorate did not hear them from Clinton’s opponent, there was no reason to consider them.
Does Janet Reno have negatives worth mentioning? But another way, is Janet Reno trustworthy? Let me just ask you a question, the answer to which flows from the eight years we saw her work her deceptions and her dodges in Washington: It’s in some ways a little event, but herein lies a truth: Does anyone in this room believe her campaign’s account of her "fender-bender" last week in her little red truck?
The other driver ran into her, but all the damage is to his car? No one was at fault, but an accident occurred. Janet was most assuredly not at fault, but the guy was not cited? There was no accident report filled out? With all of the questions about Reno’s health and her past history of drunk driving, along with her fainting spells, her campaign could put that all to bed, in the context of this accident, by producing the name of the other driver.
Guess what? The campaign won’t tell us who that is. Are you suspicious? Of course you’re suspicious. Because you’re a conservative, which means you have a brain, and because you know this woman is not to be trusted, even in a little thing like a traffic accident. If you lived in Palm Beach county, you in this room would know how to vote. But you don’t live there. That’s Reno Country, where the dead and felons vote early and twice.
Jeb Bush should make it clear, right now, today, that if Reno is going to do something as patently ridiculous as call for a special prosecutor to investigate him, then there will be no more "Mr. Nice Guy." That would be a warning shot across the bow of Ship Reno that would send the message that "If you are going to blank with me, I’m going to blank with you." Or put another way, in the words of Ronald Reagan, who quoted Dirty Harry: "Go ahead, make my day."
But what have we seen from Jeb Bush so far, other than turning tail and walking away from a tough question that posed a wonderful opportunity just last week?
Two months ago, this podium was graced by Ken Timmerman, author of the book that was about to become a best-seller, Shakedown, an expose’ about the not-so-reverend Jesse Jackson.
Timmerman has been a respected writer for Time and Newsweek and a contributing editor of Readers’ Digest. Months before his appearance here at American Forum, Ken Timmerman had written a blockbuster article about Janet Reno, an expose’ of her documented negatives, most prominently her blackmail problems, in Insight Magazine. I was only one of the sources. Mike Thompson was, I believe former Miami Police Chief Ken Harms, the best police chief Miami ever had, was one, and so were others who never ran against Reno yet know she is a scoundrel.
Two months ago State Representative Gus Barreirro sent statewide to many Republicans a letter of support for Governor Bush. He called his effort "Americans for Jeb Bush," and he including for each recipient a copy of Ken Timmerman’s Insight article. I didn’t give it to him. I’ve never met or talked with the man.
What did Jeb Bush do in response to this public spirited effort by Representative Barreiro to get the word out to fellow Republicans on Reno’s negatives? Jeb lashed out with a tirade againt Barreiro and the article’s contents as expressive of what is "the worst in politics by making things personal."
Did Jeb not think it personal when an organization that at least we are told was separate from the Gore campaign was running ads in 2000 saying that George W. Bush was responsible for the dragging death of a black man behind a truck in Texas because Dubya did not sign the version of a hate crimes law they liked? They even produced on camera the daughter of the dead man, saying "It was like Daddy was killed all over again when Governor Bush wouldn’t sign that bill." Did the Gore campaign come after those who ran that ad with the fury that Jeb went after Rep. Barreiro. No, he did not. Bush the father and Jeb Bush the son have made a career of embracing Democrats and excoriating conservatives. Just ask Ward Connerly what Jeb did to him on the issue of affirmative action.
And to top it off, to show how desperate Jeb Bush at least seems to be to hold onto his Mr. Nice Guy reputation with liberals who are, and always, have been laughing up their sleeves at his effort to do so, Jeb Bush used his Washington, D.C. lawyers to actually claim, I’m not making this up, that the words "Jeb Bush" are a trade name that can be copyrighted and deemed the property of the Bush family, and thus not even his supporters can use it without his permission.
Can anyone imagine Ronald Reagan hiring lawyers who would attempt to copyright the phrase "Reagan Revolution." This is how silly, and how wrongheaded, Jeb Bush is. If someone is getting the truth out about Reno, he doesn’t need to embrace their message, although he should. But he clearly should not cut the legs off anyone who wants to help him defeat in November the Swamp Thing. Benign neglect of what his enthusiasts are doing would be just fine. But instead, he has unloaded on them. This is unilateral disarmament. It is Jeb saying some things are just more important than winning. My reputation as a likable guy is more important than winning. Wrong.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the vast majority of the media in this state want, at the very least, a close race between Janet Reno and Jeb Bush. Nearly every positive story about Jeb Bush will be killed, and every story in which Reno trots out her Jeb-scandal-a-week will be ballyhooed. This race, I predict, will be a virtual statistical dead heat by Labor Day, so negative will be the coverage of Bush and so positive will be the coverage of Reno.
If you think you saw vote fraud in 2000, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Much of the state has gone to the vote-fraud-prone touch-screen voting machines, which have no paper audit trail by which to detect fraud. Janet Reno, throughout her career as a non-prosecutor here in Miami, participated in vote fraud by concealing it and looking the other way when it was proven. The touch-screen voting machine, which Katherine Harris foolishly opened the door for, is Janet’s ticket to ride. Before she died, I shared the podium with Barbara Olson and her husband Ted Olson in Palm Beach at a conference on the history of vote fraud in Florida. I warned of the fraud touch-screens would bring. I now have a client who lost a commission race in Medley because of such fraud. I spoke this morning with Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, and he agrees with my assessment of the risk.
Tens of thousands of votes will be stolen for Reno in Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade Counties this November. Who is going to prosecute the wrongdoers, assuming some are caught? Democrat State Attorneys in these three counties? Give me a break.
Finally, here is the risk as a nation we face from a Governor Reno. Once the campaign is over, the liberal issues of the chief executive of this state will come to the fore. The radical homosexual agenda, embodied in Janet’s new boosom buddy, Rosie O’Donnell’s drive for gay adoption, will be front and center. A state income tax, once unthinkable, will be thinkable. Tens of millions of more tax dollars will be poured into the rat hole we call public schools. The plaintiffs’ bar will sit at the right hand of the Governor. Florida will become Massachusetts South at the behest of Mike Dukakis’s Harvard Law School classmate, Janet Reno. Florida will become the cutting edge of the Brave New World.
The Democratic National Committee knows the stakes. Once Janet is safely through the primary, which she will win, tens of millions of dollars in soft money will come pouring into Florida to help Janet take out Jeb, thereby making it clear to the nation that the GOP, and maybe even its leader, George W. Bush, are vulnerable in 2004. If the DNC can remove Jeb, then it will rally the faithful for the battle two years hence in which the prize may be the Senate, the House, and maybe even the White House. The battle cry will be "Remember 2000," to spread the lie that Jeb Bush stole the election for his brother. Instead, Jeb foolishly recused himself from that election’s aftermath. He now is on the verge of recusing himself from this election as well.
If Reno can steal this election, she can then help the Democratic presidential nominee steal Florida’s huge cache of Electoral College votes in two years. Anyone think that she won’t try?
The stakes here are huge, in this gubernatorial race, right now. The only one who is acting as if he doesn’t get it is Jeb Bush. He cannot wait until the Democratic primary in September to punch back. Reno is piling on now, and climbing in the polls.
Sometimes in life we are called upon to go counter to our natures, so that things of worth are preserved. A lot of dear, sweet, loving men who wouldn’t hurt a fly died on the beaches of Normandy, called by their country to go counter to their natures and instead to go to war. This is a war for Florida, the place we love and the place we call home. If Jeb won’t tell the truth about Janet Reno, I shall. I have told it for fifteen years. Now is not the time to stop. I pray to God that after this November, I shall have no reason to have to tell the truth about Janet Reno ever again.
Well, whaddya think?
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