Donald Trump's Singing a Familiar Tune

Sen. Max Cleland (D-GA) with Secretary of State John Kerry (D-MA)

The Republican presidential primary has entered a weird area, principally driven by the entrance of Donald Trump and his bombast into the arena.  Trump has done everything from attack immigrants to NBC, but his recent comments about Sen. John McCain's military record seem to have gone too far, even for Republicans (it says something that calling immigrants rapists and murderers didn't go too far, but that's a debate for a different day).  Many Republicans have called for Trump to apologize to McCain, to former POW's, and some have even called for him to drop out of the race.  This is all interesting, and the appropriate reaction (though Trump isn't going anywhere near the exit with the poll numbers he currently has across the country), but it is making me viscerally angry not just because of Trump's comments (they were wrong), but because we've been here before and it all played out very differently.  Jake Tapper of CNN was right-there is little difference between what Donald Trump is doing to John McCain and what Republicans did eleven years ago to John Kerry during the Swift Boat controversy.

For those unfamiliar, the Swift Vet controversy surrounds the 2004 presidential election, when a group of former military veterans and POW's (known as the SBVT) publicly questioned Sen. John Kerry's military record when he was running for president, challenging whether or not he had earned his medals, which included three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star, and a Bronze Star.   They did this despite having absolutely no evidence to support their claims, having not been present when the actions Kerry took to earn his medals took place, and despite overwhelming support for Kerry's deserving these medals from people who had been present when Kerry earned the medals.  The group, while not specifically endorsed by the Bush campaign, had numerous connections with the Bush campaign and the Republican Party. Most of the group's actions were funded by prominent Texas Republican donors, many of whom were well-known supporters of President Bush, and one of Bush's election lawyers (Benjamin Ginsberg) also had the SBVT as one of his clients.  Additionally, former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole publicly questioned Kerry's medals in the media.  President George W. Bush, despite multiple calls to condemn the attacks (including, it should be noted, from Sen. John McCain), never did, and though while he didn't endorse the actions, his brother Governor Jeb Bush did in fact thank a member of the SBVT and wanted to recognize "how much (he) valued their willingness to stand up against John Kerry."  The reality is that the GOP utilized the distortion of Sen. Kerry's military record to win the election, despite the fact that it was not only heinously false, but also that it was a truly despicable way to treat a military veteran.

The same thing, it should be stated, happened during the 2002 Senate elections.  Sen. Max Cleland, a triple-amputee who almost died in Vietnam, watched his good named smeared by the RNC and Saxby Chambliss in a series of ads that Chambliss' campaign ran with Cleland's face alongside Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, and also questioned Cleland's patriotism and commitment to Homeland Security.  While Republican senators such as Chuck Hagel and John McCain denounced the ads, the RNC kept running them until public pressure final caused them to stop, but the damage was already done to Cleland.  Both Cleland and Kerry lost, in large part due to these heinous and untrue ads.  In the process, though, the Republican Party disparaged not only two military veterans but also showed the respect they pledged to our fighting men and women had its partisan limits.

It's worth noting, of course, that Sen. John McCain did publicly denounce these tactics before, and should get credit for that (it's also worth noting that McCain campaigned heartily for Chambliss and Bush later, though, so his disgust and political principle only stretched so far in this regard).  But it's also worth watching whether the right-wing media and the GOP that is disgusted now with Donald Trump will continue their calls berating him or whether they will treat him with the same casual "well, that's politics" sort of attitude that they did John Kerry and Max Cleland.  Because while the reality of what Donald Trump said is wrong, that doesn't make it new.