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Glenn Beck continued his jihad against White House Communications Director Anita Dunn yesterday on his Fox News program, focusing his rage on remarks she made earlier this year at a D.C.-area high-school graduation ceremony. Here's what he played of her remarks:

"[T]wo of my favorite political philosophers, Mao Tse-Tung and Mother Teresa, not often coupled with each other, but the two people that I turn to most ..."

Not content to do it once, he ran the same snippet again, exactly like that. Twice he described Dunn as saying that Mao was one of the philosophers "she turns to most".

In other words, by running the quote thus, he's making it clear that Dunn admires Mao as one of her favorite political philosophers that she turns to most.

He ran this truncated quote, incidentally, in response to Dunn's earlier explanation for the remarks:

"The Mao quote is one I picked up from the late Republican strategist Lee Atwater from something I read in the late 1980s, so I hope I don't get my progressive friends mad at me," Dunn told CNN.

As for Beck's criticism: "The use of the phrase 'favorite political philosophers' was intended as irony, but clearly the effort fell flat -- at least with a certain Fox commentator whose sense of irony may be missing."

Beck thought that by playing the truncated quote, he could prove that Dunn's characterization didn't add up -- after all, she said Mao was someone she "turned to most"!

Except, of course, that wasn't what she said. You have to hear the rest of the sentence after Beck clips it off.

Here's the full original quote, which you can see at the original full video:

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"The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers: Mao Tse-tung and Mother Theresa -- not often coupled with each other, but the two people I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point which is 'you're going to make choices; you're going to challenge; you're going to say why not; you're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before."

In other words, she found their words handy to make a universal and fairly banal point about being true to one's self. That's all. No Mao-worship.

You also can hear laughter from the audience when Dunn couples Mao and Mother Teresa, so at least it's clear that some in the audience got the joke. Glenn Beck didn't.

Most of all, he doesn't get that crude and hamhanded dishonesty like this only proves Anita Dunn's point, in spades.

I wrote a post on election day which talked about the politics of personal destruction that Lee Atwater created and used in the most vile way imaginable. It was so successful that it spawned his heir apparent, Karl Rove who has carried the mantle proudly. They play on the prejudices of Americans in such a way as to bring out the dark underbelly of society. I said that if Obama had won the election then not only did America rise up to vote for the better man, it also repudiated the Lee Atwater school of campaigning, at least for now.

Has a real crisis beaten the Lee Atwater school of smear politics?

So today is the day we all get to find out if the Lee Atwater school of politics has been defeated by the reality of our economic situation.

It has taken a real crisis to combat the very successful campaign strategy that Atwater championed to win George H.W. Bush the White House in '88. The same techniques that Karl Rove mastered and implemented in beating McCain and then Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004. Will truth and reality finally win out?

I wish I could tell you that Americans henceforth will never be influenced by scurrilous personal attack ads and campaign smears in the future, but my hope today is that finally this great nation has been shocked into actually using their brains to decide who should lead us out of the wilderness that came upon due to the negligence of Conservatism. I think Americans unfortunately have a short memory span and these dirty tactics will always be with us. If Obama wins, then I do think that America have no excuses any more if they do get taken in by these cowardly tricks. So I say to you now:

Yes, We Can.

I believed that it wouldn't end with Obama's election and those who thought so were a bit naive. Well, now it's come back with a vengeance and it's sick and it's ugly, but it's real. Everything that has come out of the mouths of the conservative movement and transmitted by their conduits to the public has been targeted at racial elements in our society.

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Why do the media fawn over the likes of Karl Rove? He's the heir to Lee Atwater, and his scumbag tactics are legendary.

Remember the Willie Horton ad?

Atwater's single most notorious bit of work came during the 1988 campaign, in the form of the Willie Horton ad used against Dukakis. The ad attacked a prison furlough program that Dukakis had supported while governor of Massachusetts. Horton, a convicted killer who is black, escaped while in the program and raped a woman. The ad said Dukakis was soft on crime, and made prominent use of Horton's glowering mug shot. Atwater said he was going to make Horton Dukakis's "running mate."

The ad pretty much became the touchstone for demonizing black men in political campaigning. In archival footage, we see Atwater denying that he or the Bush campaign had anything to do with the ad, insisting he'd never even seen it.

Then Forbes cuts to one of Atwater's friends describing how, before the ad was ever aired, Atwater called him into his office, showed him the ad, said he was going to set it up as the work of an independent committee (and thus, with no fingerprints) and asked what he thought. The friend says that he told Atwater it was appalling, racist and that it was going to "follow you to your grave."
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What is clear, from watching this talented man and his view of politics and America, is that his corrosive vision has seeped into the nation's political groundwater.

That's the man Rove learned from, and he is his prize pupil. With Rove's help, Atwater turned politics into a smear contest. Eventually, they all helped lead this country down the drain with their boy Bush.

Still, Karl Rove is treated with reverence, and it's sickening. On Bill O'Reilly's show earlier this week, he was saying that Cheney and the CIA should never inform Congress of what thy are doing because it won't remain a secret so, hey, screw them and the law.

Think Progress has more:

Rove then appeared to make the argument that executive branch should not inform Congress of what it is doing:

ROVE: Look, it’s interesting. The CIA briefed Congress to this, I guess, in June. And the Congress immediately leaks it. That, itself is, a violation, I think, of several statutes and indicative of why it is so dangerous to give Congress information.

To clarify, Congress did not “leak” details of the secret program. The Wall Street Journal cited “former intelligence officials familiar with the matter” in its report. But Rove’s comment seems to confirm the Bush administration’s motives for routinely attempting to hide information from Congress.

Rove lies about what happened when the facts are clear as a bell. And he conveniently forgets that the Bush administration leaked the name of a CIA operative named Valerie Plame just to smear her husband Joe Wilson because he told the truth about their lies.

Here's a newsflash to this pompous ass: The CIA is required by law to inform Congress on what they are doing. Period. There are no exceptions.

Glenn Greenwald finds a typical MSM story regarding Dick Cheney's lawbreaking. Are any of you surprised?

Dirty tricks, wedge politics, class warfare. Push polling and playing to racist instincts of voters. All's fair in political battles. If reading those things makes you think of Karl Rove, then you have forgotten the godfather of those tactics: Lee Atwater. Atwater was the originator of the winner-takes-it-all tactics, something that still reverberates today within the Republican Party. Wikipedia:

Harvey Leroy "Lee" Atwater (February 27, 1951 – March 29, 1991) was an American political consultant and strategist to the Republican party. He was an advisor of U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. He was also a political mentor and close friend of Republican strategist Karl Rove. Atwater invented or improved upon many of the techniques of modern electoral politics, including promulgating unflattering rumors and attempting to drive up opponents' "negative" poll numbers with the aggressive use of opposition research. He has been characterized as the "happy hatchet man" and "Darth Vader" of the Republican Party. In spite of criticisms of Atwater's tactics as unethical and dirty tricks, he was widely regarded as a near-brilliant political operative who helped candidates to win.[..]

Atwater rose during the 1970s and the 1980 election in the South Carolina Republican party, working on the campaigns of Governor Carroll Campbell and segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond. During his years in South Carolina, Atwater became well known for running hard edged campaigns based on emotional "wedge issues".

Atwater's aggressive tactics were first demonstrated during the 1980 congressional campaigns. He was a campaign consultant to Republican incumbent Floyd Spence in his campaign for Congress against Democratic nominee Tom Turnipseed. Atwater's tactics in that campaign included push polling in the form of fake surveys by "independent pollsters" to "inform" white suburbanites that Turnipseed was allegedly a member of the NAACP.[4] Atwater also highlighted that Turnipseed had been "hooked up to jumper cables" as a teen undergoing electroshock therapy for depression.

In 1990, Atwater was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. On his deathbed, Atwater had a famous epiphany where he renounced and apologized for his toxic contribution to politics:

My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The '80s were about acquiring — acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul

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The Emmy-nominated filmmaker Stefan Forbes is here to discuss his new documentary, Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, still playing in limited release around the country and available on DVD.

Please join me in welcoming Stefan and learn how the ghost of Atwater still haunts the Republican Party.