THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
1993
August
- August: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, attempting to peacefully oversee the transition of the USSR
Fall of Soviet Union
into a federation of loosely aligned but independent nation-states, is placed under house arrest for three days by hardline elements of the Soviet leadership. Gorbachev's political ally, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, is busily dismantling most elements of Soviet-era government in the central state of Russia, but faces powerful opposition. (BBC)
Clinton economic package begins reversal of Reagan-Bush economic downturns
- August 10: Clinton signs the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, which passed the Senate on a tie-breaking vote by Al Gore; every single Senate Republican votes against it.
Clinton Administration
(The bill barely passed the House as well, with every single House Republican voting against it as well.) As part of the economic package, taxes are raised on the wealthiest Americans and on corporations. Republican representative Newt Gingrich warns that Clinton's "tax increase will kill jobs and lead to a recession, and the recession will force people off of work and onto unemployment and will actually increase the deficit. ...This is the Democrat machine's recession, and each one of them will be held personally accountable." Gingrich is joined by fellow Republican doomsayers, including Senator Phil Gramm, who cries, "We are buying a one-way ticket to recession. I want to predict here tonight that if we adopt this bill, the American economy is going to get weaker and not stronger, the deficit four years from today will be higher than it is today and not lower. ...This plan does not reduce the deficit...but it raises taxes and it puts people out of work." GOP House member Bill Archer proclaims the bill "job-killing poison for the economy." The ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, John Kasich, tells reporters in late July that "This plan will not work. If it was to work then I'd have to become a Democrat and believe that more taxes and bigger government is the answer," and tells Clinton, "We'll come back next year and try to help you out when this puts the economy in the gutter." Despite the doom-and-gloom predictions from the right, the bill revitalizes the American economy and kicks off eight years of unprecedented economic growth. Clinton's tax policies impose the largest burden of deficit reduction on the rich rather than placing the entire burden on the shoulders of the poor and middle class; the policies will successfully vaporize the deficits and lead to an unprecedented economic boom in the US economy. And contrary to GOP talking points, taxes on income groups under $200,000 rise by less than 1%; those making less than $20,000 annually see their taxes decline. (Taxes on those making over $200,000 go up by an average of 5.4%.) Kasich does not, as promised, become a Democrat. - The success of Clinton's economic policies enrages the conservative right: "They ended up looking foolish and never forgave him," writes Joe Conason, "even when their own wealth grew exponentially during the ensuing boom. Nor did they acknowledge how wrong their gloomy forecasts had been, as the national economy achieved unprecedented growth and began to erase their party's legacy of useless debt and deficits. To credit the Democratic President would have been to discredit conservative ideology." By the time Clinton leaves office, he will preside over 115 straight months of economic expansion, the largest uninterrupted period of growth in US history, and will oversee the creation of 22 million new jobs, more than any other president and more than Reagan and Bush combined. Unemployment will drop to 4%, the lowest figure since 1970, leading to almost-complete employment without the traditional downside of serious inflation. The spike in employment figures leads to the smallest welfare rolls since the 1960s, following Clinton's welfare reform package of 1996. Even though the largest share of growth is experienced by America's wealthy, the nation's increasing wealth is enjoyed by Americans at all economic levels, after years of economic stagnation for US middle- and lower-class workers under Reagan and Bush. Poverty rates decline dramatically. By the end of Clinton's second term, the administration will have paid off over $360 billion of national debt; between the debt payoff and a drop in government spending, the US economy will experience its first surpluses in decades. More Americans will own stock than at any other time in history; the federal income tax burden will be lower as a percentage of income for the average American than any time since 1966.
- Upon the ascendancy of George W. Bush and the subsequent return to Reagan-era policies, the surplus will be squandered in less than a year, 2 million jobs will disappear, along with trillions of dollars in market capitalization; family incomes will decline, poverty figures will soar, and the government will lurch from Clinton-era surpluses to a $159 billion deficit in a single year. It is worth noting that the US economy will heading into a recession before Bush takes office in January 2001, though the official beginning of the recession is March 2001; Clinton's economic advisors know the recession is inevitable, as a function of economic cycles, and have prepared plans to minimize the impact of the upcoming recession on the American economy; instead, pessimistic speculations by Bush and Cheney, along with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, make the recession far, far worse. Economist Paul Krugman points out that the Bush-Cheney economic team was either completely unable to comprehend the simple math that foretells gaping deficits as a result of their tax cuts, or they consciously lie about their effects. Shades of the conscious lies about Reaganomics. (Joe Conason, Paul Waldman, Al Franken)
Ruth Bader Ginsberg joins Supreme Court
- August 10: Ruth Bader Ginsberg is sworn in as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
Supreme Court
An active member of the ACLU and a former appellate court justice, Ginsberg's record as a women's right supporter serves to blunt conservative criticism, and she is named to the Court with little opposition. Ginsberg is probably the only true ideological liberal on the court, though she is not an unqualified supporter of Roe v. Wade. In 2000, she will vote against the Bush v. Gore decision awarding the presidency to George W. Bush. (Wikipedia) - Mid-August: Right-wing financier Peter Smith contacts the American Spectator's David Brock,
Whitewater / Lewinsky and related "scandals"
the reporter who had published the licentious and wildly inaccurate The Real Anita Hill to tumultuous praise from conservatives. Brock was searching for the subject of another book, and Smith, a close friend and colleague of Newt Gingrich, is searching for dirt on the Clintons. Smith's previous contacts with Brock had been an abortive effort in 1992 to accuse Clinton of fathering an illegitimate son with a black prostitute. Smith tells Brock that, according to Little Rock lawyer Cliff Jackson, another Clinton enemy, four Arkansas state troopers are ready to talk about their former boss's sexual liasons with a bevy of women not his wife. Smith offers Brock $5000 to begin work on a book based on the troopers' revelations. Brock is no stranger to such offers; the Anita Hill book had been subsidized by two conservative foundations, both connected to newspaper magnate Richard Mellon Scaife. Brock and lawyer Cliff Jackson meet in Little Rock, where Jackson tells Brock that the Los Angeles Times has a reporter, William Rempel, sniffing around the story already. Jackson's plan is to use Rempel to light a fire under the story, vaulting Brock's book into the limelight. Brock knows of Jackson as, in the words of authors Joe Conason and Gene Lyons, a "corrosively angry former friend of the president" who blames his failure as a politician on Clinton. He is not impressed during their meeting, as Jackson almost obsessively rants about Clinton's character flaws and supposed dishonesty. Jackson himself is indulging in his own dishonest behavior: he fails to tell Brock that he has already cut a deal with troopers Larry Johnson and Roger Perry to act as their agent for any book, television, and movie deals. - Brock spends the next two days listening to the four troopers as, one after another, Jackson parades them in and out of Brock's motel room. Patterson is the most voluable, a raconteur who alternates lurid stories of Clinton's and his own sexual conquests with a vicious hatred of the Clintons. Trooper Perry shares Patterson's views, but says little and glowers through the interviews. Danny Ferguson is forthcoming but conflicted about Clinton, and fourth trooper Ronnie Anderson says virtually nothing. All four had hoped for lucrative jobs in Washington, and all are disappointed and, they say, disturbed about the direction Clinton is taking the country. Unaware that Brock himself is gay, they seem particularly angry about Clinton's order lifting the ban on gays in the military. However, they are not there to talk policy. For hours they regale Brock with unlikely stories about Clinton's sexual advantures, claiming to have arranged and covered up liasons in the governor's mansion, at various apartments, and even a junior high parking lot. They tell of violent rages by Hillary Clinton, who they say is carrying on her own sometimes public affair with Vince Foster. They focus primarily on Clinton's "gargantuan [sexual] appetites" and Hillary's foul mouth and vicious temper. Brock questions the four's motives but returns to Washington convinced of their essential truthfulness. However, he doesn't intend to ghostwrite anyone else's book, and is unsure that the troopers can contribute enough to make a book he can write. He also suspects that Smith may have promised the troopers their own monetary deal, though Smith falsely denies any such arrangement.
- A second meeting, in September, is less fruitful. Brock makes it clear he won't ghostwrite a book for either Smith or the troopers, reminds them that the Gennifer Flowers story a year earlier tanked because of her contract with the tabloids, and suggests that he write the troopers' stories up as a series in the Spectator, more fully and colorfully than anything Rempel and the Los Angeles Times would be willing to print. Jackson doesn't share with Brock his fears that Rempel will not write any story whatsoever; Jackson sees Brock and the far less influential Spectator as a backstop outlet for getting his clients' story in print. The Spectator has a small, cult-like following, and owes its success largely to Rush Limbaugh's push of Brock's The Real Anita Hill on his talk show. The magazine's founder and editor, R. Emmett Tyrrell, keeps the magazine afloat with his own personal fortune and a variety of tax dodges, and fancies himself the heir to H.L. Mencken. The magazine enjoys the support of influential conservatives such as Robert Novak, Irving Kristol, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Robert Bork, and Jack Kemp. The magazine had flagged in recent months, and Brock wasn't sure if Tyrrell would even be interested in the troopers' stories.
- Further visits with Jackson and the troopers prove relatively fruitless, with two of the four troopers, Ferguson and Anderson, backing out of the project. Patterson and Perry, though, remain enthusiastic. Brock is also troubled by his knowledge of a "fund" for the troopers, presumably financed by Smith. A late November session in Little Rock finds Brock speaking on the phone with Los Angeles Times reporter Rempel, who is brusque and uninterested in any financial arrangements between the troopers and Smith, though he has more knowledge of the arrangements than Brock. (Rempel denies ever speaking with Brock.) Smith refuses to acknowledge that the news of his financial deal with the troopers will destroy their credibility as news sources, and a frustrated Brock threatens to expose the entire deal. Smith denies any such dealings were happening, though as Brock later writes, "The troopers and Cliff kept trying to get more from Peter. Whatever he offered was never enough." Smith then steers Brock towards Richard Porter, a law partner in the firm of Kirkland & Ellis, urging Brock to discuss the matter with him. Porter is a former Bush White House lawyer and close colleague with a variety of former Bush officials. The discussion with Porter leaves Brock even more disturbed. In December, Smith gives Brock a document affirming, falsely, that no financial dealings of any kind have been entered into between Smith and the troopers; Brock knows that the document gives him an ethical out, but also knows that the affirmation is a lie.
- Too, Brock is concerned about the stories themselves. They are lurid and crude, and worse, hardly believable. Brock seriously doubts that Foster ever openly groped Hillary Clinton in a public restaurant, and doubts that Bill Clinton received oral sex from two women in state vehicles. Brock wonders how much damage his own reputation will suffer if he goes public with such sensational stories. He receives conflicting advice from two older and theoretically wiser friends: Republican strategist William Kristol urges caution, but former judge and conservative activist Laurence Silberman advises Brock to go for it, saying that the story could make Brock's career. (Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)
- August 19: Wichita physician George Tiller, standing outside the Womens' Health Clinic, is shot in both arms by an unknown sniper.
Domestic terrorism
Eyewitnesses say that Tiller has been shot by a woman who was observing anti-abortion protesters outside of Tiller's clinic. The shooter, Rachel Shannon, an Oregon native, is charged with attempted first-degree murder. Local anti-abortion protesters deny any connection with the shooting, though Shannon is a veteran of the anti-abortion movement who has written admiring letters to anti-abortion murderer Michael Griffin. Days later, the clinic is open to business "as usual," with protesters trying their level best to block the driveway while pro-choice organization members work to keep the driveway clear and the protesters from interfering with their clients. Members from both sides say that they've protested with and against each other long enough to know the ropes and know where the lines are drawn, and say that Shannon is an outsider whose interference and criminal behavior are unappreciated. The Wichita Eagle stresses in an editorial today that Shannon is not from Kansas, and says that local abortion dialogue "has been respectful and in the best democratic tradition." The paper continues, "Most people on both sides want to avoid turning every issue into an abortion clash. The attempt on Dr. Tiller's life should be seen for what it is -- a crime." - Shannon will later be indicted for 10 arson and acid attacks on abortion clinics in Oregon, California, Nevada, and Idaho in 1992 and 1993. (Washington Post, Washington Post, Washington Post)
