Rich Lowry Quotes
The case against Jeff Sessions was threadbare three decades ago. It's based on hearsay and innuendo and a joke he made about the Klan.
Lowry, Rich. Panel Discussion. Meet the Press, NBC, 2016.
In a 1980 South Carolina congressional campaign Democratic candidate Tom Turnipseed accused Atwater of masterminding anonymous phone calls to voters revealing the fact that, as a teenager, Turnipseed had received electroshock therapy. Atwater told the press:
The reason that this is a noteworthy quotation is that it illustrates how the immoral political tactics of the junior senator from Wisconsin, Joseph P. McCarthy, was turned into a noun and used to describe a type of unethical political behavior the world over. Even in South Africa, labeling political tactics as McCarthyism is an effective accusation. Senator McCarthy himself was censured by the Senate for his tactics of claiming people were communists when he had no evidence of same and claiming that he had long lists of communists in the government when he did not have them.
This quotation is the root of a great dilemma for all politicians who are attacked on a personal level. Most slanders are soon forgotten. The politician who reacts and publicly counters the slander inevitably does two things. More people become aware of the slanderous charges then there is a public battle over it, and the media tend to report the contest and hence the slanderous charge for a longer period of time than if it were uncontested. However sometimes the undefended charge is perceived as being true especially if it is a major charge. If the politician does not defend, the charge can get accepted and damage the politician’s standing. In the Kerry-Bush Prudential campaign, Kerry had the edge until the so-called Swiftboat Veterans made up a fictitious tale of Kerry, a decorated war hero, being a coward in the Vietnam war. Kerry thought the charge so preposterous that he didn’t bother to defend it. His lack of reaction was taken by much of the public as his admission of the charge. Kerry’s hero image was destroyed by a large enough proportion of the electorate that the electoral votes shifted to Bush, even though Kerry had the most votes by far. For each politician, the decision must be made for each charge and there is no clear way to know in advance which is the better strategy when a false charge is made.
Richard Lowry (/ˈlaʊri/; born 1968) is an American writer who is the editor of National Review, an American conservative news and opinion magazine. Lowry became editor of National Review in 1997 when selected by its founder, William F. Buckley, Jr., to lead the magazine. Lowry is also a syndicated columnist, author, and political analyst who is a frequent guest on NBC News and Meet the Press. His most recent book, The Case for Nationalism: How It Made Us Powerful, United, and Free, was released in 2019.
