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Exclusive: Horowitz Says Clinton-Era Greed Preceded Market Fall Phil Brennan, NewsMax.comThe decade of greed that preceded and helped bring on the stock market free fall came under the Clinton administration, David Horowitz reminded NewsMax.com in an exclusive interview.
"If it has to do with lax ethics, of a lack of ethics, Bill Clinton set the standard," Horowitz, author of "How to Beat the Democrats: And other Subversive Ideas," told NewsMax.com. "Remember, we have as the chairman of the Democratic National Committee a man [Terry McAuliffe] who made $18 million on a $100,000 investment [in the now-bankrupt Global Crossing corporation]. This is the king of money corruption in politics." Recalling those facts for the voters, he said, can help Republicans go on the offensive against Democrat attempts to pin corporate scandals on the Bush administration. The High Road to Defeat Yet just a few days ago GOP National Chairman Mark Racicot went out of his way to absolve Democrat Chairman Terry McAuliffe of any wrongdoing in his role in the Global Crossing debacle, which smells to high heaven, thereby costing his party a chance to use that scandal to charge the Democrats with sleazy doings in the corporate examples of criminality. The Democrat strategy, Horowitz said, is "just an example of how the Democrats are superior at the art of political war, even though their policies are bankrupt. As far as the Democrats’ attack on the Republicans as being in bed with corporate corruption – have we forgotten Marc Rich? "And there’s no greater exercise of political chutzpah than the Democrats as champions of campaign finance reform after they took hundreds of thousands if not millions of illegal dollars from a Chinese communist dictatorship to get their presidential candidate elected twice in the last decade." Democrat successes in sticking Republicans with the pro-big-business label, Horowitz said is due to the GOP’s being "prone to playing to their stereotyped image instead of going against it. They err on the side of defending the corporate wrongdoers – part of this comes out of the side of a Republican virtue – their principle as defenders of a system that has lifted more people out of poverty than all the socialist revolutionaries put together. "Defending the system sometimes involves attacking those who undermine it from within, and I think these corporate CEOs should go to jail. "I wish the presidential statement on this issue had been closer to Teddy Roosevelt, such as his characterization of the corporate bandits of his day as ‘malefactors of great wealth.’ He needed to be stronger in his condemnation of the corporate crooks. He was way too defensive. He needs to go on the offense. He needs to be fierce. " NewsMax asked Horowitz how President Bush could go on the offensive and get his message across to the voters given the mainstream media’s leftist bias. President 'Can Define Debate' "The president has the bully pulpit there. One advantage of having the White House is that you can define debate. The president can go over the heads of the media to the people. When he speaks, it’s reported unfiltered. And he gets to make longer statements than most. "The Democrats are doing what they should be doing [to win], but Republicans are not doing a good job of fighting back. Once again they’re doing the right thing, but not in the right way. They’re on the defensive. They’re always on the defensive, and the defensive is the losing side politically. Lessons From California's Gubernatorial Race "If you are working off such a losing tactic you can only win if the other side screws up enough. For example, in California we have a gubernatorial election which is competitive only because Gray Davis has created a $23 billion deficit in the state. "If he hadn’t screwed up so dramatically in the energy crisis, he’d be walking away with this now because his campaign ads are just far superior to those of Bill Simon, his Republican opponent, even though his Republican opponent is a decent and good guy who we all hope will win." How can the president and his party go on the offensive? "The way to have done it would have been to slam very hard the corporate chieftains who are responsible for bankrupting these large companies, the heads of Enron, WorldCom etc. It’s a stylistic thing – it’s purely stylistic. The political audience, the great mass of voters, have no idea what the details of the policies are. So it’s all staged theatrics. "If the president had made a very emotional speech and talked about the betrayal of shareholders, of employees, the betrayal of ordinary Americans and the betrayal of the system itself which has produced so much wealth, he would have come out a lot better, and so would the Republicans. They need to be fierce in their attacks on the corporate wrongdoers. It’s style. It’s not necessarily substance." Midterm Elections How bad is the GOP’s condition for the November elections in view of the problems in the stock markets? "A lot depends on the economy itself. There are some things that you can’t affect. I think that, all things considered, the president did very well. His poll numbers have slipped pretty dramatically over the past week. But I think that’s also in part the fact that the economy is being so badly hammered. "The big thing is that you can overcome an adverse reality. There is a degree that in the real world impacts what happens in elections. If the economy is down you can compensate for that, but it depends how far down it is. "As I’ve written in 'How to Beat the Democrats,' the Bush team accomplished the political miracle in the 2000 election because you had an incumbent Al Gore running off the biggest economic boom in the history of the world. Why Bush Won and Gore Lost "There’s no way that he should have lost that campaign. There’s no way Bush could have won it. It was a combination of Gore’s ineptitude, his inability to figure out who he was, at the core of that. And also the brilliance with which the Bush campaign fought the election." NewsMax noted that Horowitz made a great point about the theme of restoring the honor and dignity of the White House. "That and the fact that the Republicans decided to fight the Democrats on education and to engage and embrace the social caring issues. They took away some of the Democrats' sting that way. The character issue was the key to the victory, and Gore contributed mightily to the Republican advantage. "What the Democrats are able to do, because they understand the nature of politics in America is that they are able to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. They can take a situation that would be disastrous and turn it to their advantage. If the Democrat party were seen for what it is, you wouldn’t even have to tell people that Democrats have a large responsibility for the economic mess we’re in. But they always manage to present themselves for what they are not, which is a champion of ordinary people, integrity etc. Democrats Conceal 'Repulsive' Reality "The Democrat reality is really repulsive, but they manage to conceal it. The Republican reality is actually quite good, but they manage to conceal that, too," he said, chuckling. "You have to understand that politics is about performance. There’s a theater of politics, how you relate to a central American myth: the myth of the underdog. "Bush needs to go out of his way to compensate for the false perception the Democrats have created that he really was tied to oil interests and a Texas company called Enron. He needs to be seen as more angry than is perhaps necessary. It would have been great if he had put on the Teddy Roosevelt mantle of crusading against the malefactors of great wealth." The GOP must take off the gloves and come out swinging if it wants to win in November, Horowitz told NewsMax.com.
Editor's note: See the five-part review of David Horowitz's "How to Beat the Democrats: And Other Subversive Ideas." Part 1: David Horowitz Reveals 'How to Beat the Democrats'
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