Vol. CCLVII, No. 2 October 19, 2012
The New Hampshire Gazette
Live
Free! or Die
The Nation’s Oldest Newspaper™ • Editor: Steven Fowle • Founded 1756 by Daniel Fowle
First Class U.S. Postage Paid Portsmouth, N.H., Permit No. 75
PO Box 756, Portsmouth, NH 03802 • editors@nhgazette.com • www.nhgazette.com
Address Service Requested
The Fortnightly Rant
Dawn Comes to Marblehead The longest-running war in American history is not being waged in Afghanistan — it’s happening right here in “The Homeland.” The Bad Old Days President Richard Nixon declared war on the news media more than forty years ago. The term “war” is slightly hyperbolic, we’ll admit — but only slightly. When President Nixon’s “Plumbers” weren’t busy bugging Democratic headquarters and wiretapping journalists’ phones, G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt were plotting to murder journalist Jack Anderson. Thanks to a vigilant hotel guard and a couple of diligent reporters, the snarling Richard Nixon was finally driven from the White House in disgrace; and for a few short years it seeemed as if the news media had won. Phase Two Then came smiling Ronald Reagan, scheming Newt Gingrich, and their plump, nerdy sidekick, the arch-propagandist Frank Luntz. Through the perverse application of Luntz’s marketing expertise, Republicans were able to develop a whole new strategy: don’t fight the news media, control the medium: fight language itself. Convince people to vote for your party — and against their own interests — by calling things what they are not. Total War Successive waves of religious fervor in the early 19th century led historians to call western New York State “the burned-over district,” because there were not enough unconverted people left to sustain another revival. Successive waves of Republican misrepresentation have turned the
nation’s political dialogue into a burned-over district. Given the blasted post-Bush terrain over which he is fighting, Mitt Romney knows that to win the White House, merely abusing our common language will not suffice. He’s got to escalate. And the only way to do that is to sever the last remaining connections between reality and what comes out of his mouth. This theory is a tremendous stretch, we admit. But how else can one explain the Romney/ Ryan ticket’s apparent determination not to utter a single thing that’s actually true? Don’t Like That Lie? I Have Others … Romney claims his tax plan can extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, cut all tax rates by another 20 percent, and eliminate the capital gains, estate, and alternative minimum taxes, all without adding to the deficit or raising taxes on the middle class. After careful study and analysis, the non-partisan Tax Policy Center concluded that there is no way the plan could perform as promised. The Romney campaign countered by claiming that “no fewer than six independent studies have confirmed the soundness” of the plan. Except, as Bloomberg’s Josh Barro explained in a detailed 2,000-word article, they were mostly blog posts, not “studies,” and they failed to refute the Tax Policy Center’s conclusions. “Pre-existing conditions are covered under my [health care] plan,” Romney insists. Yes — provided you have health insurance now. But if you don’t, you’re not. Not to worry, says Romney. You can always get health care at your local emergency room. “We don’t
have people … who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.” Except we do. A Harvard study found that lack of insurance is killing 45,000 Americans every year. The Gish Gallop Mitt Romney didn’t invent this lie-a-minute strategy. He’s just the first major party Presidential candidate to base his whole campaign upon it. In fact, there is a name for this technique. As RationalWiki. org explains, “the Gish Gallop, named after creationist Duane Gish, is the debating technique of drowning the opponent in such a torrent of half-truths, lies, and straw-man arguments that the opponent cannot possibly answer every falsehood in real time.” Or, as the internet puts it:
Good News, Everyone Thanks to the superabundance of industrial-grade political lies emitted over the last several decades, some mainstream journalists have gotten over their squeamishness and begun to grant objective reality a little respect. This was particularly evident Tuesday night during the Presidential Gong Show Town Hall at Hofstra University. Mitt Romney said “it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.” President Obama replied, “Get the transcript.” Moderator Candy Crowley, who had read the transcript, said “He did in fact, sir … he did call it an act of terror.” Conservatives immediately went bonkers — how dare she state what she knows to be true? It’s Just Business Romney appears to have made a cool, rational business decision: the voters he might actually be able to win over just don’t give a damn about facts. It’s an incredibly bold move. But, given the na-
tion’s shifting demographics, the Republican party is in a desperate situation and might never get another chance. As Sen. Lindsey Graham was quoted saying recently in the Washington Post, during the Republican Convention, “[t]he demographics race we’re losing badly. We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.” Corporate America, through the power of advertising and the illusion of choice, has gradually, over the past several decades, succeeded in converting the majority of American citizens into mere consumers. If the GOP’s champion, Mitt Romney, takes the White House next January, we will be further transformed from consumers into hostages. The most shocking thing about this shift is that it places the presidency in the hands of the leastinformed, most-easily-excited voters. Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, the mostly-conservative authors of the Federalist Papers, would weep.
Court, but to no avail. The Republican-appointed Ballot Commissioners did a partial recount, which they called for Wyman by two — count ’em — two votes. Thomson pulled certification from Durkin and gave it to Wyman. Cotton resigned early, thus allowing Thomson to appoint Wyman to fill out the remaining three days of his term. It seemed that Wyman was home free. Then Durkin pulled a Constitutional ace out of his sleeve. The Constitution gives the House and Senate the final say on who will become members of those bodies. Durkin filed an appeal in the Senate, where Democrats had a 60-vote majority. Republicans, however, had the filibuster. A seven-month stalemate ensued.
Prompted in part by a scathing editorial in the Washington Post, Wyman proposed a special election to settle the matter. Durkin agreed, and on September 16, 1975, Durkin won with a 27,000vote majority. Ever since, the Durkin-Wyman contest has been held up as proof of the adage that every vote counts. The law of unintended consequences never sleeps, though. The protracted fight over the seat is widely thought to have helped unite the previously-fractured Republican caucus in the Senate. In his first year, Durkin and his Democratic colleague, Sen. Tom McIntyre, wrote a successful piece of legislation extending GI Bill eligibility, which had expired ten years after discharge, for the
life of the veteran. No political junkie in those days would skip an article quoting Durkin; you might run the risk of missing his wit. We’re unable to verify this before our deadline, but Durkin is alleged to have once responded to a letter from Governor Meldrim Thomson, “Dear Governor: It appears some idiot has managed to get hold of your official stationery. I thought you should know.” As the Bible says, “a prophet is not without honor save in his own country.” On Durkin’s passing, the Portsmouth Herald posted a 125word Associated Press obituary online, but did not bother to run it in the print edition.
News Briefs
Can One Vote Count? Senator John Durkin, the winner of the most epic battle in history for a U.S. Senate seat, died on Tuesday at the age of 76. A Navy veteran, Durkin had been living at the State Veterans Home in Tilton. In 1974, Durkin and Louis Wyman both sought to replace retiring Norris Cotton, a Republican. Durkin, a Democrat, was the state’s former Insurance Commissioner and very much the underdog. Wyman, his Republican opponent, was the sitting Representative for the state’s First Congressional District. Wyman had also been Attorney General from 1953 to 1961. Soon after assuming that office he began a prolonged investigation, mandated by the state leg-
islature, into alleged Communist subversives in New Hampshire. The investigation uncovered no threats; but it severely disrupted many lives, cost a good deal of money, and provided a first-rate springboard for Wyman’s political ambitions.* Wyman won the November 1974 election by 355 votes; but Durkin requested a recount, which he won by ten votes. Republican Governor Meldrim Thomson certified Durkin’s election provisionally, but Wyman appealed to the State Ballot Law Commission. Durkin fought Wyman’s appeal all the way to the state Supreme * The Editor, at the time of Wyman’s investigation, was slightly acquainted with Henry Iram (1875-1964), one of its subjects. We are now accumulating material for a fuller accounting of the clash between these radically disparate men.
News Briefs to page two