Conason: Stephen Moore's right-wing freak show

[Manix]

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As of yesterday, the hot political ad in Iowa is the "barbershop" spot sponsored by the conservative Club for Growth. This little masterpiece accuses Howard Dean of planning to "raise taxes on families by $1,900 a year," but its real message is far nastier.

"I think Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading," barks a man leaving a barbershop; a woman with him completes the sentence: "... body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont where it belongs."

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Moore and his club of corporate Republicans have a long history of stirring up Midwestern rubes with demagogic advertising, but this ad's script achieves new heights of hypocrisy. "Hollywood-loving?" Not long ago, Moore declared himself "honored" to accept an advisory position in the new administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, an actor not known for his adherence to "Middle America values."


That's only the first layer of phoniness in Moore's attack. There is in fact nothing "middle-class" or "Middle American" about the Club for Growth, an outfit financed and operated by such wealthy ideologues as Thomas "Dusty" Rhodes, Richard Gilder and Lawrence Kudlow.

Rhodes spent nearly two decades at Goldman Sachs. Gilder has been a stockbroker since 1954 and operates his own firm. Kudlow, of course, is the genial CNBC host and Wall Street economist (whose style of Savile Row tailoring is rarely seen in the barbershops of middle-class Middle America). All three gentlemen reside in New York City, a place even more akin to Sodom than Burlington, Vt.

And let's not forget Club for Growth co-founder Ed Crane, the president of the Cato Institute, where Moore himself is a senior fellow. What would Iowa's middle-class Middle Americans think of Cato's ongoing advocacy of full drug legalization? How would that couple leaving the barbershop feel about Cato's staunch opposition to the war in Iraq, and almost every other exercise of American military power abroad?



http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/01/08/dean_ad/index.html

[Eric J in MN]

1. Good article. I bought Conason's "Big Lies" book, but

Good article. I bought Conason's "Big Lies" book, but only read part of it. He may be better as an article writer.