Maoists in the Republican Party

Anita Dunn, White House Communications Director, called out Fox News for their lack of accuracy in reporting the news.

In return Fox News has made Anita Dunn Fox News Public Enemy Number One...for this week, at least. Next week the witch hunt will move on to someone else. Possibly someone related to the environment, but that’s besides the point.

Goodman Beck, Fox News anchorman, has called Anita Dunn a Maoist, a communist dictator who believes in killing her opponents and someone who controls the media.

All of the media. Everything except conservative media. Which is majority of the media. So I guess Anita Dunn controls a minority of the media.

Why is Anita Dunn a Maoist? Well because in a speech to a high school graduating class this past summer, Anita Dunn made a humorous statement in which Mao and Mother Theresa were ironically used to make a point about working hard, finding your own path in life and not having others tell you what you can or can not accomplish.

When the statement was originally made, the people at the graduation laughed and the irony was not lost on them. But it was lost on the modern day conservative party, who are not as literally developed as high school students are to recognize an ironic statement and laugh.

Mother Theresa and Mao Tse-Tung were used in the same sentence. That’s funny.

And it’s also funny when she say that they are her two favorite philosopher.

But as state previously, it was not funny for the right.

Fox News and the rest of the conservative media were all trying to take pot shots at Anita Dunn all day.

Limbaugh, Fox News and the blogs…oh my!!!

The conservative media forgets, or just chooses not to research or remember the conservatives that have spoken favorably of Mao.

Here are some ‘Mao” examples from the right:

McCain repeatedly quoted Mao when discussing politics. McCain has repeatedly quoted "the words of Chairman Mao," stating of his presidential campaign, "[I]t's always darkest before it's totally black," during a July 2007 conference call with bloggers, an April 2008 appearance on The Late Show with David LettermanDavid Letterman, and on several other occasions.

Gingrich quoted Mao: "[P]olitics is war without blood." A May 1995 Roll Call profile of then-Speaker of the House and current Fox News contributor Newt GingrichNewt Gingrich reported that Gingrich said the House and Senate are "arenas for conflict" where "we sublimate civil war to bring people together." Roll Call further reported, "Gingrich even quoted a political leader not previously known to be one of his influences. 'War is politics with blood; politics is war without blood,' said the Speaker, citing the late Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung." Gingrich regularly appears on Fox News' Hannity, The O'Reilly Factor, On the Record, and Fox News Sunday, and visited Beck's Fox News program earlier this year, according to a search of the Nexis news database.

Goldwater's "alter ego" said he "followed the advice of Mao Tse-tung." In his 1964 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," Richard Hofstadter wrote that Stephen C. Shadegg, adviser to Sen. Barry Goldwater during his senatorial and presidential campaigns, approvingly cited Mao and quoted him, saying that he "followed the advice of Mao" while working for Goldwater and in his other campaign work. In its obituary of Shadegg, The New York Times described him as "a political campaign manager who was regarded as the alter ego of Senator Barry Goldwater in the Senator's unsuccessful quest for the Presidency in 1964." The Times also reported that Shadegg "for three years wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper column that carried Senator Goldwater's byline," "served as Western regional director of the Goldwater forces" during his 1964 presidential campaign, and "was acknowledged as the person closest to the Senator in philosophy and as the craftsman of the Goldwater image as a staunch conservative." (The New York Times, 5/24/90)

GOP strategist Ralph Reed approvingly cited Mao, Viet Cong. A 1992 Seattle Times article reported that Republican strategist and former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed said in an "interview with The Phoenix Gazette" that "Mao Tse-Tung said politics is war without bloodshed. Clearly, there are some metaphors that sit nicely with politics." (The Seattle Times, 10/25/92, from Nexis)

Reed called for using Viet Cong-style political tactics. In The Art of Political Warfare, John J. Pitney Jr., a contributing editor to the libertarian journal Reason, wrote that Reed explained the Christian Coalition's strategy of sometimes backing " 'stealth candidates' for local office who would downplay their affiliations in order to attract broader support" by saying, "It's like guerrilla warfare. If you reveal your location, all it does is allow your opponent to improve his artillery bearings. It's better to move quietly, with stealth, under cover of night. ... It comes down to whether you want to be the British army in the Revolutionary War or the Viet Cong. History tells us which tactic was more effective."

Bush recommended Mao bio to adviser Karl RoveKarl Rove. In his December 26, 2008, Wall Street Journal column, Rove wrote that he and President BushPresident Bush "recommended volumes to each other (for example, he encouraged me to read a Mao biography; I suggested a book on Reconstruction's unhappy end.) We discussed the books and wrote thank-you notes to some authors."

Cato article on " 'Leninist' Strategy" for Social Security reform reportedly laid foundation for Bush's proposal. According to Los Angeles Times staff writer Janet Hook, "[a] generation of free-market conservatives like [Cato Institute president Edward H.] Crane" had been "laying the groundwork for" "Bush's plan to allow younger workers to divert Social Security taxes into personal investment accounts." Hook then cited a 1983 Cato Journal article in which Heritage Foundation analysts Stuart Butler and Peter Germanis wrote: "It could be many years before the conditions are such that a radical reform of Social Security is possible. ... But then, as Lenin well knew, to be a successful revolutionary, one must also be patient and consistently plan for real reform." In their Cato Journal article, titled, "Achieving a 'Leninist' Strategy," Butler and Germanis wrote that "[a]s we contemplate basic reform of the Social Security system, we would do well to draw a few lessons from the Leninist strategy. Many critics of the present system believe, as Marx and Lenin did of capitalism, that the system's days are numbered because of its contradictory objectives or attempting to provide both welfare and insurance." According to a Nexis search, Cato and Heritage experts have appeared on Beck's show a total of at least 14 times in the past six months.—from Media Matters.

Even after you show conservatives that conservatives have also quoted Mao Tse-Tung, they try to back track and say “well at least they don’t joke about Mao”.

Goodman Beck makes that case on Fox News.

He makes that point all the while there is a Caucasian man in a Mao Tse-Tung uniform, looking very funny, sitting next to a red phone that Anita Dunn is exclusively invited to call Beck on.

Not okay to joke if the subject is a mass killer and you are a Democrat.

Okay to joke about Mao Tse-Tung and mass killers if you are a conservative though, or if you are Goodman Beck, or if you are Fox News.

Here’s a link to the Media Matters site: http://mediamatters.org/research/200910200026