McConnell's Waterloo-Gate?

[Speed Daemon]

If you've been following the news today, you'll know that obstructionist GOP leader Mitch McConnell, who is running for re-election, has been complaining far and wide about a "Watergate style" leak of a meeting where his staff discussed the dirty tricks that they planned on using against Ashley Judd, who was rumored to have been considering running against McConnell. The leaked recordings were published by Mother Jones magazine.

Although it's no surprise that a GOP wants to stomp on Constitutional protections of a free press, what's interesting is how ironic his Watergate analogy is:

1. The name "Watergate" comes from a series of burglaries (not bugging) done by the GOP/Nixon campaign against the Democratic Party. The last one at a DNC office at the Watergate Hotel was where "the plumbers" were finally arrested.
2. The burglaries were committed with the hope of finding "dirt" to be used against the Democrats. Nothing of the sort was discovered.
3. The plumbers were originally formed to stop White House leaks that were embarrassing (and rightly so) to Richard M. Nixon.
4. The infamous Nixon tapes were not made from bugging--Nixon himself directed his secretary to record the damning evidence.

So, will McConnel's own tilting at windmills prove to be his undoing? Will McConnell be the latest GOP crook to be heist by his own petard?

 

[Gmash]

It was probably one of his own people who made the tape and leaked it anyway.

 

[psionandy]

[*]The burglaries were committed with the hope of finding "dirt" to be used against the Democrats. Nothing of the sort was discovered.

Well... that was the idea that was around at the time... although it appears that the truth was a lot more damaging to Nixon. And again to add Irony it was the LBJ tapes that reveal more about the Nixon tapes

By the time of the election in November 1968, LBJ had evidence Nixon had sabotaged the Vietnam war peace talks - or, as he put it, that Nixon was guilty of treason and had "blood on his hands".

BBC News - The Lyndon Johnson tapes: Richard Nixon's 'treason'

 

[SiempreTuna]

By the time of the election in November 1968, LBJ had evidence Nixon had sabotaged the Vietnam war peace talks - or, as he put it, that Nixon was guilty of treason and had "blood on his hands

Apparently the Democrats had pretty good circumstantial evidence that Nixon's team had used their contacts in the south Vietnamese government to sabotage the peace talks a week or two before the election .. that Nixon won. They didn't make it public, though because they simply didn't believe him capable of something so low - and treasonable.

Bitterly ironic given what's come about Nixon - and the GOP generally - since ..

 

[Speed Daemon]

It was probably one of his own people who made the tape and leaked it anyway.

That's usually the way it happens. And since there's no actual evidence of a crime...