Black Sheep Politics

The comedy movie “Black Sheep”, starring Chris Farley and David Spade, chronicles a fictional gubernatorial campaign in the state of Washington.  Farley plays one of the candidates for Governor’s eccentric brother while Spade plays one of the candidate’s staffers assigned to “babysit” Farley’s character to ensure that he stays out of trouble and does not cause damage to the campaign.  

 

Early on in the film, a group of shady men set the Recreation Center Farley’s character works at on fire while another man takes pictures making it look like he caused the fire.  Later in the movie, the Governor’s campaign released the photos on Election Day in attempt to hurt her opponent’s campaign.  

 

I hate to spoil the movie for those who have not seen it, but the incumbent Governor initially wins the election.  While watching the election returns come in, Farley notices that the number of people who voted in Garfield County exceeds the number of registered voters there.  After breaking into the Garfield County Hall of Records, the duo finds out that several dead people managed to cast their ballots for the incumbent Governor.

 

Sadly, the dirty tactics used in the movie “Black Sheep” mirror tactics used by political campaigns in real life.  Unlike in the movies, the politicians in real life actually get away with their actions.  Sexual assault allegations, even false ones, can frequently destroy a candidate’s political aspirations.  This dates back to 1991, when the left tried to destroy Clarence Thomas’s chances at becoming the next Supreme Court Justice.  After the completion of his confirmation hearings, one of Thomas’s former colleagues Anita Hill came forward with sexual harassment allegations.  In light of Hill’s accusation, the Judiciary Committee decided to question Hill.  Ultimately, the left’s attempts to make Clarence Thomas the next Robert Bork failed and Thomas still sits on the Supreme Court today.   

 

In the 2004 Senate Race in Illinois, Barack Obama won the Democratic Primary for the open Senate seat in Illinois after The Chicago Tribune dug up some dirt on his primary opponent Blair Hull.  About a month before the Democratic Primary, the newspaper revealed that his ex-wife sought a protective order against him during a divorce proceeding.  Many believe David Axelrod, Obama’s campaign strategist who had worked at the Tribune, had a pivotal role in the leak of this information.  His general election opponent Jack Ryan withdrew from the race after divorce records revealed his wife, actress Jeri Ryan, accused him of taking her to sex clubs; allegations he vehemently denied.  Obama ended up winning his Senate race against last-minute replacement Alan Keyes with more than 70 percent of the vote.  How convenient.       

In 2011, Republican Presidential Candidate Herman Cain faced a series of sexual assault allegations that forced him to end his campaign.  At the time the allegations surfaced, Cain was performing very well in the polls; showing that even as far back as 2011, voters desperately hungered for an outsider.  Cain eventually suspended his campaign as his poll numbers dropped in the wake of the allegations.  As soon as his campaign concluded, the allegations of sexual assault against Cain miraculously disappeared.  The left had accomplished their mission by getting him to drop out.           

 

Given their success in destroying Herman Cain’s presidential campaign, it should come as no surprise that the left continued to use this playbook.  32 days before the Presidential Election and two days before the Second Presidential Debate, The Washington Post released audio of a conservation Donald Trump had with “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush on a hot mic where he makes some perverted remarks about women, to put it mildly.  NBC strategically released the 11-year old unflattering tape at an inopportune time, hoping to inflict as much damage on the Trump campaign as possible.  Several Republicans, including his former opponent Carly Fiorina, asked him to drop out of the race despite the fact that early voting had already begun in some states.  In the days following the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, a few women came forward accusing the future President of sexually assaulting them.

 

 

While the “Access Hollywood” tape came as a nice surprise for the Democrats and the Never Trumpers, they had already paid Fusion GPS to collect dirt on Trump.  Originally, The Washington Free Beacon had hired the firm during the Presidential Primaries to conduct research on many of the Republican candidates but the Clinton Campaign began working with them in April 2016.  One week before inauguration day, Buzz Feed published the contents of a dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, a former MI6 agent hired by Fusion GPS, one week before Inauguration Day.  The dossier contained several unproven allegations; one of which says that Trump paid Russian prostitutes to urinate on a bed once slept in by the Obamas.   

 

Last week, with around a month to go until the Alabama Senate Special Election to fill Jeff Sessions’ old Senate seat, decades-old sexual assault accusations surfaced against the Republican Candidate, Judge Roy Moore.  A woman told The Washington Post that Moore inappropriately touched her when she was 14 and he was 32.  Three other women claimed that Moore pursued romantic relationships with them despite the fact that they were in their late teens at the time.  White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded to the situation by saying that “Like most Americans, the President believes that we cannot allow a mere allegation, in this case one from many years ago, to destroy a person’s life.  However, the president also believes that if the allegations are true, Judge Moore will do the right thing and step aside.”  Unfortunately, as this article demonstrates, mere allegations have done considerable harm to people’s lives.

 

In an interview with Sean Hannity, Moore, now 70, denied the allegations put forth by The Post.  Moore defeated sitting Senator Luther Strange in the September 26 Republican primary runoff Many Republican Senators who hated him to begin with have asked Moore to quit the race.  Moore has run several statewide campaigns; therefore, many wonder why these allegations have just come to light now. If the encounter between Moore and a fourteen year old girl did in fact happen, the media will definitely use him as an example in their never-ending case to prove the hypocrisy of Christian conservatives.  In the wake of the allegations against Moore, Alabama has considered postponing the special election; currently scheduled for December 12.  Even if Moore did drop out (which he will not do), his name will remain on the ballot.  Some people have already asked Strange to pull a Lisa Murkowski and stage a write-in campaign.  In the meantime, Moore has said that he will sue the Post for defamation.        

 

Other false allegations not involving sex of any kind can also cause damage to political campaigns. In 2012, Harry Reid took to the Senate floor and claimed that Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney did not pay his taxes.  Even after the allegations turned out not to be true, Reid justified his actions, saying “Romney didn’t win, did he?”

 

This dirty kind of politics reminds me of a quote from Anjelica Huston’s character in the movie “Daddy Day Care”: “In life, there are winners and there are losers; and to win, you have to play dirty!”  No wonder many good people decide not to get into politics; they don’t want to see their reputations destroyed.  The absence of good people in politics accounts for the existence of The Swamp.  More than 20 years after “Black Sheep” hit theaters, the blood-sport of politics has only gotten bloodier in the age of the internet.  The days of political campaigns focusing exclusively on the issues that affect everyday Americans have come and gone.