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May 31, 2006
Smearing Ensign with someone else's sins
At one point, for instance, columnist George Sokolsky wrote of some New York City candidates, "Both these men are opposed by Vito Marcantonio, who is Stalin's choice for mayor of New York." Few knew much about Marcantonio's actual record and actual votes (his critics carefully ignored the fact that he had first been elected to Congress as a Republican), but he was a useful devil for the period and he became a national figure by being constantly attacked. In Europe Marcantonio would probably have been considered a social democrat and the idea of his following the communist party line would have been laughable. At the time in the U.S., many things left of center, such as socialism, were considered communist by people who probably could not have defined either. Newspapers that were unwilling to publish editorials that might offend local advertisers could slander Marcantonio as a subversive in astonishingly vicious ways and look daring. A mild one was the Reno Evening Gazette's claim that "Marcantonio is the closest thing to a communist that congress has ever contained." And politicians used his voting record to attack their opponents. The practice was to claim, "My opponent and Vito Marcantonio, the notorious New York leftist, vote in lockstep!" The best known instance of this was Republican Richard Nixon's attacks on Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas in the 1950 California U.S. Senate race: "My opponent did not vote as a Democrat. She did not vote as a Republican. It just so happens that my opponent is a member of a small clique which joins the notorious party liner, Vito Marcantonio of New York, in voting time after time against measures that are for the security of the country." The same technique was used against Nevada U.S. House candidate Walter Baring, a Democrat, by the campaign of his Republican opponent Cliff Young in 1954. Nevada Republican leader Les Gray attacked Baring for having a voting record on labor issues that was similar to that of Marcantonio. In 1964 the Democrats used the same sleazy practice on Barry Goldwater. Because there was some overlap between Goldwater's positions and those of the John Birch Society, he was branded a Bircher. A few days ago the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada put out a statement on U.S. Sen. John Ensign's position on immigration: "John Ensign is clearly out of touch with all but the most extreme elements of his own political party and a cabal of political extremists, nativists and racists. A CBS poll released May 18, 2006 shows that 77 percent of Americans support a program that would clear the way for illegal immigrants to seek citizenship if they've been in the United States for at least five years, pay a fine and back taxes, learn to speak English and have no criminal record. Yet Nevada's junior senator ignores this overwhelmingly positive number and refuses to support the 'path to citizenship' that has the endorsement of President Bush, a bi-partisan majority in the Senate, all of Nevada's employer and employee organizations, a broad spectrum of religious organizations, and on and on. "The same poll shows that 19% of Americans oppose a path to citizenship. These people include Nevada's White Peoples Party, late night talk-show host and noted anti-immigrant Mark Edwards, and Senator Ensign." This is beyond the pale. It is possible to take Ensign's position on immigration without being a racist. There is nothing in Ensign's record that suggests he's any more blind on issues of race than the rest of us. I recently read that Fox News reporter Ellen Ratner says she is in favor of open immigration. So is the U.S. Libertarian Party. Is it legitimate to link the party with her, or her with the party, simply because they agree on this issue? In 1950 columnist Stewart Alsop pointed out one of the pitfalls of this kind of thing. Conservative icons like Robert Taft, Kenneth Wherry, and Albert Jenner, Alsop reported, "voted with almost perfect consistency on foreign policy with New York's party-lining Vito Marcantonio..." Politicians who oppose each other are SUPPOSED to have overlapping positions. It's what makes it possible for them to work together and get things done. And this kind of criticism is unworthy of the Progressive Leadership Alliance. |
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