Who's the Bossie? (SCOTUS Treason, Part 3)

One of the enduring stereotypes of the 60's is the anti-war, free love, dope-smoking, long-haired hippie protester. Having been on college campuses at the time, I can attest first hand that such people actually did exist. (And they seemed to be having more fun than everyone else).


Not nearly as celebrated is the growth during those same years of a much quieter but eventually far more subversive organization called the College Republicans. Although founded in the late 19th century, the organization nearly went under during the 50's and 60's as Democrats generally controlled both houses of Congress and the hearts and minds of most college students.

But not all.

In 1967, using a grass roots, get-out-the-vote campaign that would do MoveOn.org proud, a chapter of the College Republicans effectively won a Kentucky gubernatorial election for a candidate whose political calling cards were anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism and a vow to overturn an order that gave minorities equal access to previously whites-only public facilities. Suddenly, College Republicans became an 'in crowd'. Competition for leadership positions became so fierce that in 1973, the disputed election for the group's national presidency would only be decided when a prominent national Republican--George H.W. Bush--unilaterally declared the winner. That victor was a young dirty trickster who had already been investigated by the Watergate special prosecutor: Karl Rove. In fact, the legacy of the group extends non-stop to the present day, with direct descendants including the late Lee Atwater and the still fully fulminating Grover Norquist...as well as second-level connections to right-wing notables as diverse as direct-mail maven Richard Viguerie, Phyllis Schlafly and Left Behind author Tim LaHaye.

But the College Republican of the hour...and perhaps eventually the most important of them all...is a lunatic named David Bossie. He left that group to help grow a new organization called Citizens United, whose work has included the infamous Willie Horton ad, revelations of the 'liberal' secrets hidden by noted radical John McCain, and foremost--forever and a day--the dogged, demented, perpetually discredited attacks on the family Clinton. It was Bossie's documentary called, Hillary: The Movie that was the center of the treacherous Supreme Court decision granting corporations dominance over the national election dialogue.

In 2005, Citizens United went to court to use the McCain-Feingold provision of federal election law to prevent TV ads for the upcoming movie, Fahrenheit 9-11, a product of director Roger Moore. (The law limits how special interest cash can be spent 30 days before a primary election, and 60 days before a general). Bossie lost that case. Which may have helped spur the lawsuit ruled on this week by the Supreme Court, in which Bossie demonstrated a jaw-dropping (choose your own descriptor here) irony or hypocrisy, claiming the same legal strictures he attempted to invoke in 2005 now should not apply to his own film. Truly, the mind boggles.

When I say Bossie's two decade obsession with the Clintons is psychotic in nature, I'm not alone. He invented the Whitewater 'scandal' in his own mind...and then successfully persuaded the New York Times that it was true. After Enron fell, he claimed that both political parties were to blame, since President Clinton also hosted Enron chief Ken Lay as an overnight guest in the White House. Except that it never happened. He was the driving force trying to tie the Clintons to the 'murder' of Vince Foster. In an ultimately shamed attempt to try to link Bill Clinton to the suicide of a pregnant woman (in his mind, Clinton was the father, of course), he stalked the woman's mother relentlessly, despite her repeated statements that Clinton had nothing to do with it. (This mania ultimately led Bossie to sneak pass security and storm into a hospital room to confront her, where her husband was recovering from a stroke). But when he distributed doctored tapes of an interview edited to create a false impression smearing Hillary, even his party brethren had had enough. George H.W. Bush sent letters to his contributors, urging them not to support Citizens United. Newt Gingrich, while House Speaker, forced the firing of Bossie from his job as a Senate staffer. Enough, they seemed to say, was enough.

But there is no stake sharp enough to pierce Bossie's Clinton-hating heart.

The ridiculous contention of his Hillary case in the Supreme Court was that his film should not be considered as promoting a vote for or against a specific candidate (thus exempting it from the regulation). The Federal Courts got it right when they said there was no other way to possibly interpret it. So they threw the suit out. But with Ted Olson leading the appeals charge in the Supreme Court (the same Olson who had argued the 'winning' side of Bush v. Gore before the high court--see previous post), Bossie knew the votes would be aligned in his favor.

In fact, the entire Citizens United case was a travesty. (A well-reasoned analysis is here). It was pushed through on an inexplicably fast track...it defied a century of precedent...and it deliberately dismissed the narrow issue of the argument in order to purposefully explode it to historic proportions, which allows the ruling to now taint all federal elections for the foreseeable future. The College Republicans win.

And I can't help but wonder whether a betrayed attachment to the unholy alliance of his youth is behind Bossie's mental illness. After all, there is one big one who got away. One who once proudly pledged allegiance to the College Republicans...but lost faith during the Vietnam War.

That turncoat? Hillary Clinton.