But the concept remains the same: Control as much as possible what the population gets to see and hear; create chaos for your opponent's government, economically and politically; blame it for the mess; and establish in the minds of the voters that their only way out is to submit, that the pain will stop once your side is back in power.
Today's Republicans have fully embraced this concept of political warfare, whereas the Democrats generally have tried to play by the old rules, acquiescing when Republicans are elected to office with the goal of "making government work," even if the Republicans are the ones setting the agenda.
Unlike the Democrats and the Left, the Republicans and the Right have prepared themselves for this battle, almost as if they are following a CIA training manual. They have invested tens of billions of dollars in a propaganda infrastructure that operates 24/7, year-round, to spot and exploit missteps by political enemies.
This vertically integrated media machine allows useful information to move quickly from a right-wing blog to talk radio to Fox News to the Wall Street Journal to conservative magazines and book publishing. Right-wing propagandists are well-trained and well-funded so they can be deployed to mainstream news outlets to hammer home the talking points, regardless of the truth.
Thus, you have embarrassments like CNN's "Crossfire," where it doesn't matter that the Democrats are actually telling the truth when they cite evidence that the Tea Party, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, provoked the government shutdown after refusing to allow House-Senate budget negotiations for six months and even after the Senate agreed to accept the House budget figures.
You still have the Republican voices repeating their talking points, laying the blame for the fiscal crisis on President Obama and the Democrats for refusing to negotiate. The dialogue of pathetic shows like "Crossfire" can be summarized as "talking point, talking point, counter-talking point, cross-talk talking point, another talking point."
But the GOP's politics of disruption have not only been the rule during Obama's presidency. Though the ugliness of the Clinton years has largely faded from memory, the blueprint for the current chaos was drafted then. Barack Obama, like Bill Clinton, was treated as an illegitimate interloper on the rightful Republican ownership of the White House.
The Clinton Case
After getting elected in 1992, Clinton complained that his "honeymoon" period -- when presidents are generally afforded the benefit of the doubt and their policies get respectful attention in Congress -- didn't even last through the transition, the two-plus months before a new president takes office.
Clinton found himself facing especially harsh hazing from the Washington press corps, as the mainstream media -- seeking to shed its "liberal" label and goaded by the right-wing media as "soft on Clinton" -- tried to demonstrate that it would be tougher on a Democrat than any Republican.
The mainstream press hyped minor "scandals" about Clinton's Whitewater real estate investment and Travel-gate, a flap about some routine firings at the White House travel office. Meanwhile, the Right's news media spread false stories implicating Clinton in the death of White House aide Vince Foster and other "mysterious deaths."
Republicans in Congress did all they could to feed this press hysteria, holding hearings and demanding that special prosecutors be appointed. When the Clinton administration relented, the choice of prosecutors was handed over to right-wing Republican Appeals Court Judge David Sentelle, who consciously picked political enemies of Clinton to oversee zealous investigations.
The use of scandal-mongering to destabilize the Clinton administration peaked in late 1998 and early 1999 when the Republican-controlled House voted impeachment because of Clinton's extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky and Clinton had to endure (but survive) a humiliating trial in the Senate.
The Republican strategy, however, continued into Campaign 2000 with Vice President Al Gore facing attacks on his character and integrity. Gore was falsely painted as a delusional braggart, as both right-wing and mainstream media outlets freely misquoted him and subjected him to ridicule (while simultaneously bowing and scraping before Republican candidate George W. Bush).
When Gore managed to win the national popular vote anyway -- and would have carried the key state of Florida if all legally cast ballots were counted -- the Republicans and the Right rose up in fury demanding that the Florida count be stopped before Bush's tiny lead completely disappeared. Starting a riot at the vote-counting center in Miami, the Republicans showed how far they would go to claim the White House again.
Then, five Republican partisans on the U.S. Supreme Court -- wanting to ensure that the new president would keep their side in control of the courts and recognizing that their party was prepared to spread disorder if Gore prevailed -- stopped the counting of votes and made Bush the "winner." [For details, see the book, Neck Deep.]
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