Clinton Hearts McVeigh: How the Left Works

...or, never let a good tragedy [that you indirectly caused] go to waste.

Power Line notes that the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing has just passed. I have been fascinated at how quickly the Democrats, particularly Bill Clinton, jumped on this event as a way to smear Republicans and Tea Partier. As is always the case with these low-lifes, one should never fail to take political advantage of tragedy. John Hinderaker's Power Line piece actually details, via quotes from Dick Morris, how Clinton took political advantage of this violent incident when it occurred.

Morris, working at that time as a Clinton operative, actually recommended that the then-beleaguered President, who'd just lost the House to the Newtonians, could use Oklahoma City to smear the Repubs and turn the incident to his political advantage. Citing an article in the Washington Examiner, Power Line elaborates:

Morris told Clinton that "direct accusations" of extremism wouldn't work because the Republicans were not, in fact, extremists. Rather, Morris recommended what he called the "ricochet theory." Clinton would "stimulate national concern over extremism and terror," and then, "when issue is at top of national agenda, suspicion naturally gravitates to Republicans."

It worked:

It was a political strategy crafted while rescue and recovery efforts were still underway in Oklahoma City. And it worked better than Clinton or Morris could have predicted. In the months after the bombing, Clinton regained the upper hand over Republicans, eventually winning battles over issues far removed from the attack. The next year, 1996, he went on to re-election.

 Power Line adds a comment from Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds on the topic:

[T]his statement serves as a useful reminder to those who have come to think of Clinton as some sort of cuddly, not-so-bad figure. He was a demagogue who would say whatever he thought might work when he was President, and he still is.

If you examine this all more carefully, this particularly tactic actually hews pretty closely to the Alinskyite tactics of the Obamamaniacs--currently on display in the careful timing of the SEC's accusations against Goldman Sachs. The general idea is to target, freeze, smear, and discredit any and all obstacles standing in the way of the lefty elites' agenda. It's a discernable pattern.  And unfortunately, it's proved quite effective.

Making matters worse, the evildoing that the Democrats love to blame on the right is, more often than not, being perpetrated by the Democrats themselves. Their current meme is that the only terrorism we have to fear is the terrorism coming from the right--which, in fact, is virtually nonexistent, as in the still baseless charges of violence and racism vs. the Tea Party. Unreported by the media, however, is the simple fact that most violence and intimidation is currently initiated and conducted by union, machine Democrat, and far left thugs against those on the right.

So to Hinderaker's, Morris,' and Reynolds' useful observations, I'd like add my own convenient  "if...then" statement which pretty much distills how this whole thing works. And, I hope, provides a useful, practical insight that can be used by Republicans and Tea Partiers this summer and fall:

If the Democrats are accusing the Republicans and the Tea Partiers of perpetrating Evil Thing X...

Then the Democrats themselves are currently undertaking Evil Thing X.