I’m amused that you think anyone is saying that. You, yourself, said your suspicion was “unsupported”, so it’s a wonder you don’t understand why people dismiss it.
Well, he also matter of factly declared that “Bush Sr” had “a mistress” and “nobody cared” ignoring the fact that this was merely a rumor that inspired a number of gossipy jokes among reporters but there was never any strong evidence of it.
Had GHWB actually been like Gary Hart actually caught with his pants down(metaphorically) he might have had a point, but he wasn’t so Second doesn’t.
Rumor and wild speculation are not the same as getting caught in the act.
Because I assume politics is dirty based on history and experience. Dirty tricks are an old staple of politics.
He could have responded better, but would there have been an effective response? Clinton benefitted from two major factors that were not going to help Dukakis: he was running against an unpopular incumbent and he was a different kind of Democrat. Bush tried to go negative and Clinton sure had plenty of vulnerabilities. The public just didn’t care anymore. If Clinton had run just four years earlier it would have been a different story. Things had just changed a lot between 1988 and 1992. Recession, end of the Cold War, the public was ready for change. In 1988, the Soviet Union still existed, the economy was booming, and Reagan left office with a 60% approval rating. As Nate Silver would say, the fundamentals very much favored Bush.
So any conspiracy you invent out of thin air should be believed, regardless of whether there’s any evidence to believe that it’s true? Just because “dirty tricks are an old staple of politics”?
That’s some solid logic there.
Sure. And that leads us to suspect a possibility, but not to hold onto that possibility in the face of facts that tell us otherwise. Or, to hold onto that possibility in the absence of any facts that support it.
So, bring on your facts, and we’re all ears. Just saying “politics is dirty” is a license to espouse any conspiracy theory one wishes. And if one only wishes to engage in conspiracy theories about one side of the political aisle, then the more parsimonious explanation is that one is blinded by partisan politics.
I don’t claim to be non-partisan and never have.
You’ve made the same kind of argument that was espoused for more than four decades that Nixon’s people did not sabotage the Paris Peace talks in 1968 because there was no evidence of it, and a lot of people still assert that there isn’t evidence for it. Of course, since the evidence has come out that it did indeed happen. The Lyndon Johnson tapes: Richard Nixon's 'treason' - BBC News
Setting up a honey trap in politics is nothing new or at all unusual. That Hart was dumb enough to fall for it was not new either. I suppose it is possible that it wasn’t your standard issue honey trap, but it strikes me as likely since it was most unlikely that Mr. Hart would have been caught on a boat in another country if Ms. Rice had not been sent for exactly that purpose. Sometimes the usual explanation and the most likely one is the true one, and honey pots are frequent in politics.
Even Mark Feldman has gone public on being Deep Throat in Watergate. The Gary Hart story is not as central to American History, but it is interesting that the authors have never stated exactly how it was so easy to exactly when, where, how and who to catch Gary Hart with in a foreign country and to know that it wasn’t innocent.
While it is possible that Ms. Rice was not a honey pot, it is naive to believe that.
For the same reason it was naive to believe that Nixon hadn’t sabotaged the Paris Peace talks.
Other things naively dismissed on this board simply due to a lack of evidence:
The Apollo Hoax
9/11 Conspiracy Theories
The efficacy of homeopathy
Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons
Unicorns
So this was roundly dismissed at the time? I doubt it. There was plenty of evidence available to the public that it was untrue, but our Congress and the UN bought the outright lies and so did most of the public.
What the chemical weapons hoax and the Paris Peace sabotage, the Monica Lewinsky pals and Donna Rice have in common is that they were all dirty political tricks. Experienced and sharp economic analysts knew for a fact that Bernie Madoff was engaged in a Ponzi scheme for years and tried to get investigations done, but naive nit-wits fell for it anyway. That doesn’t mean a skilled observer cannot spot a scam, or a dirty political trick from a mile away. Three card Monty is always a scam. Impossibly high returns are always a scam. Political campaigns will have false rumors planted and scandals exposed. You don’t think Donna Rice was a plant? Fine with me. Using your principles and mine, our next poker game should go swimmingly.
Raw politics isn’t science. It is dirty tricks to manipulate power. Anyone who thinks otherwise is naive.
Sometimes long after the hand is over, such as the Paris Peace talks case, history lays down the hand for all to see. Those who claimed there was no evidence that Nixon committed treason by interfering with the talks couldn’t read the faces. Either willfully, or through naivete. When Mark Feldman earnestly told the world he was not Deep Throat, he had a great poker face. Virtually no one guessed it was him for decades. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t. His motive was anti-corruption. That seems to be far rarer.
Oh bullshit!
Real life is not an episode of House of Cards.
If the setting up of “honey traps” was so common in American politics then it should be easy for you to provide instances of such honey traps being set by American politicians within the past 50 years.
Please list a single example.
If you don’t provide one reasonable people will have to conclude you can’t provide one.
Please prove me wrong.
Ok, I nearly pissed myself laughing at this. First of all, his name wasn’t “Mark Feldman” it was “Mark Felt”. Yes, Feldman is a Jewish name and Felt is Jewish but that’s not his name.
Making such a mistake doesn’t in and of itself discredit your whole post but it certainly doesn’t inspire confidence in your knowledge of or ability to analyze American politics.
Beyond that, the idea that a Hoover loyalist involved in God knows how many questionable activities was motivated not by anger at being passed over and feeling that he was unappreciated but “anti-corruption”?
Well, ok if you uncritically take everything he said at face value, but such a sentiment doesn’t strike me as terribly consistent with believing in and promoting far fetched conspiracy theories.
Are honey reaps common in American politics? We know for sure that simple infidelity is common both among politicians and non-politicians. Which is more likely? How often has simple infidelity been exposed compares to honey traps?
Who won the election?
[QUOTE=Acsenray]
Are honey reaps common in American politics?
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That’s the wrong question. What we need is some kind of evidence that Hart was set up by Evil Republicans.
Interestingly there is an article about who leaked the Monkey Business photo published recently. No idea how much, if any, of it is true, but it does not bode well for the conspiracy theorists among us.
Ah well. GD is indeed the forum for faith-based witnessing IIRC.
Regards,
Shodan
The real article is the cover story of this week’s NYT Sunday Magazine. I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but I await the sensational “reveal” that TSS will fill us in on.
Not to mention, as that article deftly points out, having affairs was something powerful men (and many not-so-powerful men) of the time did, and they didn’t need to be entrapped.
So again, lacking any actual evidence, the most parsimonious explanation is that Hart was simply one of the guys. Powerful men attract women; no honey trap needed.
Even if she was a honey pot, he didn’t have to stick his hand in.
The NYT article* paints her as a Marilyn Monroe wannabe, and Hart could certainly be a Kennedy stand-in. But if one is basing one’s conclusions on faith rather than evidence, I guess that isn’t going to matter.
*quoting the woman who was the source of the leak
History, experience and a nose for the thing isn’t faith. I never needed faith to believe that Nixon sabotaged the Paris Peace talks. It was obvious. It is the same thing. You assert the simplest path is always the true one? Occam’s Razor is a rule of thumb, not a scientific law, and political sabotage is a regular practice. It isn’t a reverse Schrodinger’s Cat where you cannot determine that a conspiracy exists until the evidence exists on opening the box, the evidence exists even when the box is closed. The nature of the activity determines the political misbehavior. Yes, it is true that sometimes when you see a man lose at three card Monty, that he could not correctly follow the card and that man isn’t being cheated. But you can rest assured that such a fellow is a shill to prove to the crowd that the game can be won. It can’t be.
http://www.unc.edu/~pmeyer/Hart/hartarticle.html
You think that wasn’t a convenient anonymous tip? Okay. That’s your opinion. But I think that one of Hart’s opponents, Democrat or Republican, arranged it.
What is really interesting about our disagreement on this, and matters political, is that we probably both consider the other’s position other goofy credulous and naive and our own skeptical and analytical.
You are trying to promulgate a conspiracy theory. This is generally done in three steps
[ol][li]It could have happened![/li][li]Prove it didn’t! [/li][li]That just shows how deep the conspiracy goes![/ol][/li]You’re on the second step. Keep digging.
Regards,
Shodan
Of those three steps I’d still be on step one. I haven’t asked you or anyone else to “prove” it. I have said it might be possible that this might not be. But when you accuse me of steps two and three, you attribute an argument I have not made. I’ve stated that due to experience and history, it is likely it was someone who was an opponent. You then assumed I meant only Republican, but Hart had Democratic opponents at that time too. Democrats are not above exposing scandals.
Again, I notice utter silence on the Paris Peace Talks sabotage by Nixon. Are you asserting that a conspiracy cannot exist until the evidence is exposed to the public? That all the people who accused Nixon of treason for more than four decades were nutty slanderers? That it was inappropriate as a topic for public or private discussion? I notice you guys are really silent on the subject as though you think it is still an inappropriate subject for any discussion.
Good point. When I hear “someone like Atwater”, I immediately think of Democrats.
Agreed, it was utterly idiotic when you said “someone like Atwater” for people to think you meant Republicans.
I notice you’ve refuse to answer my rather polite and simple question, so I’ll ask again.
You implicitly claim that the use of honey traps in American politics is common.
Please name a single documented case of a honey trap put together by one American politician to “catch” another one within living memory.
If you’re unable or unwilling to list one reasonable people will have to conclude that your assertion was asinine.
Thanks in advance.