Posted on 11/03/2011 12:31:01 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
......Days after I got into the presidential race in 2007, I was greeted with a website, PhoneyFred.org, described in the media at the time as an anti Fred Thompson smear site. You couldnt really tell who was behind it, but we learned of it from the Democratic National Committee, which made ample use of it. We assumed that they had created it. However, a reporter at the Washington Post (of all people) decided to find out who was behind the site. After a lot of effort, she traced it to an executive of TTS Strategies, a South Carolina consulting firm run by J. Warren Tompkins, one of the most notorious hardball political operatives in the country.
Politicians of opposing campaigns were known to get what was called the Warren Treatment. He ran George W. Bushs 2000 campaign, in which anonymous flyers and telephone calls accused John McCain of fathering an illegitimate child with a black woman.
In 2007, he was running Mitt Romneys campaign in South Carolina, where Mitt was behind the rest of us in the polls. Of course, when confronted, both Tompkins and Mitt were shocked to learn that a rogue employee (who ran Tompkinss office) was running such a website (out of the office), and the site was taken down immediately. One of the more benign and amusing things the site accused me of was being a flip flopper. I kid you not.
This doesnt mean that Mitt is behind the Herman Cain hit piece. Id like to think that he and his extensive staff, many of them with training in the political dark arts has learned....
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Also...Don’t blame me, I voted for Fred...
What if Cain had become the nominee and this crap came out in October 2012? I'm sorry Cain has this problem but I'm very glad that it came out now and not later.
I care about policy, and not whether someone got high when they were twenty or had marital trouble when they were thirty or anything of that sort. I have been pushed into libertarian land because of it.
There is religion, and then there are politics. If you look for Jesus in D.C. you will be disappointed.
Not only that, but most people who pass judgment would not withstand the same scrutiny of their own lives. I don't like holier-than-thou hypocrites of any stripe.
Yep. Short odds on Mitt.
For what it’s worth (and this is just my gut) my money is on the source being the other Rick: Rick Santorum.
Santorum thinks he can get back in the race and win the nomination if he can win Iowa. He has put all his eggs in the Iowa basket.
Santorum’s desperate, and this smells like a desperate act.
Santorum has a direct attack on Cain prominently on his website. He doesn’t have the same type of attack on any of the other candidates.
Santorum has a page about Cain on his site that could only be described as a lie. It displays a question that Cain was asked (”What is your position on abortion”), but below it displays the answer to a totally different question (”If your grandchild was raped, would you force her to raise the child”).
I had a long, heated discussion over this with a Santorum supporter that turned out to be connected to the campaign, because she said she knew the person responsible for the site (mentioned them by name), couldn’t believe they would lie, and would ask them about the page that evening. The page is still up.
What that tells me is the Santorum campaign is not above spreading a lie about an opponent.
For what it’s worth, the Santorum campaign is also portraying itself as the “family values” campaign. If you were going to hit an opponent in one area that would cause the most voters to move over to Santorum, an attack on Cain’s character would be a logical move.
PS
I agree with the latter part of the story. Whoever did release this story, if they ever get caught, is in deep ****. Voters, especially tea party voters, are not in the mood for a gutter campaign this year. There are too many serious problems, and voters want serious discussions about our problems. They don’t have the patience for gotcha games this time around.
Same reason I would never run.
Total agreement. That billion dollars Obama is going to have is not just for ads...their opposition research is going to be top-notch...
Heard Cain on Hannity not long ago and he’s holding firm that it was Perry. I’m with Cain!
You're kidding right?
I'm assuming that a huge number of Tea Partiers are posters here and I sure don't see any serious discussion of issues.
From what I remember, there were fliers and robocalls done to start the rumor mill going, though they were all done “anonymously”, I’m not sure if it was tied concretely back to the Bush campaign. There was also a push poll done that asked something like “Would you be more or less likely to vote for McCain if you knew he had an illegitimate black daughter”, after he had appeared on TV with his adopted, dark-skinned Bangladeshi daughter.
It clearly was the Demwits — they fully expect Romney to be the nominee, and want him bloodied and discredited before November 2012.
I agree with Fred; it was Mitt Romney.
I suspect LBJ was far worse at dirty tricks than Nixon
My thoughts exactly!!
Really? That is disturbing.
Heard Cain on Hannity not long ago and hes holding firm that it was Perry. Im with Cain!
Me too. I am with Cain 100 percent. I wish Perry would just fess up so we can go on with getting Cain elected. We have so many problems and Perry’s nonsense is keeping us from getting her done.
“I remember Romneys misleading ads about Huckaby.”
I remember the Huckesters question about Romney and Mormonism.
Nope, I think it was Newt.
______________________________________________________________
I highly doubt that. I think Newt is too smart to do something that stupid. I could be wrong.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.