The Gay Jewish Consultant Behind Conservative Leaders
October 23, 2014
(left, Arthur Finklestein with Bibi Netanyahu in 1999) Michael Harris' book A Party of One, about how Canadian PM Stephen Harper
assumed dictatorial powers, has focused attention on the role
of veteran US political consultant Arthur Finkelstein, 68, whose resume reaches back to Nixon and Reagan.
His clients includes a who's who of right-wing politicians in the US, Israel, Eastern Europe and Canada. (See client list at bottom of Wiki entry.) Finkelstein is notorious for clunky but effective attack ads, such as those on Canadian Liberal leader Justin Trudeau.
Below are pertinent passages from articles about Finkelstein. What are the chances Arthur Finkelstein is another link between the Illuminati bankers and their political vassals? Does this help explain the decline of parliamentary democracy in Canada?
"Finkelstein is the ultimate sort of Dr. Strangelove, who believes you can largely disregard what the politicians are going to say and do, what the newspapers are going to do, and create a simple and clear and often negative message, which, repeated often enough, can bring you to victory," said Philip Friedman, a Manhattan consultant who got his start working for Finkelstein Democratic rival David Garth.
In November, please vote for the llluminati Jewish shill of your choice!
We've all been Finkelthinked
Finkelstein would also work for Ronald Reagan, before joining Canada's National Citizens Coalition [an anti-big-government lobby that Harper led from 1998-2002.] According to Gerry Nicholls, who was Stephen Harper's VP when he was running the NCC:
Arthur [Finkelstein] was an American political consultant who worked for the NCC, he gave us political, media and fundraising advice. He was, in fact, truth-be-told, one of the chief reasons behind the NCC's success. He was also the top Republican political consultant, if not the top American political consultant period. He was also the guy who basically invented the negative ad. His nickname was the "Merchant of Venom."
And this "Merchant of Venom" taught Stephen Harper well.
Finkelstein's strength was in finding a weak spot, as flimsy as it might be, and then creating an entire campaign around it. Harper found Dion's in his difficulty with the English language, to create the image of a bumbling fool with the simple "Not a Leader" attack.With Michael Ignatieff it was more difficult, but he found a "weak spot" in his five years spent teaching at Harvard. He couldn't use his teaching positions at Oxford, Cambridge or the London School of Economics, because they were British. So those five years spent in Boston became the focal point of the "Just Visiting" ads. And the fact that while teaching in Boston, Ignatieff chose "we" to connect with his students, that "we" became the most powerful two letter word in the English language.
Another strategy of Finkelstein's was to give negative connotations to certain things through repetition and association. "Tax and spend liberals", "reckless coalition", that kind of thing.
This strategy became known as "Finkel Think". But too much Finkelthinking can be a bad thing. In the U.S. several of his campaigns backfired because he used terms so much, that the negative response was aimed at the ads, and the Democrat won.
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Harper gets a hand from the Merchant of Venom
Michael Harris connects the dots between Harper and Finkelstein, who is nicknamed the "merchant of venom" because of his skill with attack ads.
"Finkelstein's modus operandi was always the same: Pinpoint polling aimed at exposing a weakness in an opponent; then use a trenchant, repetitive advertisement to exploit the candidate's Achilles heel," Harris writes.
Finkelstein keeps a low profile, preferring to avoid the media and delivering his advice to politicians in face-to-face meetings. But Harris found a recording of a talk he gave in Prague in May 2011 in which he outlined his tactics. (Interestingly, he told his audience that Greek riots could be used to discredit austerity opponents, which Harper's election ads did that month in Canada.)
Finkelstein said that in politics, objective truth isn't important. Perceptions are. And it's possible to win elections by creating "a totally negative vote against an opponent while not showing your own candidate," Harris writes.Harper often seems to efface himself, projecting blandness and leaving the spotlight on his opponents....
Finkelstein is credited with "swiftboating" John Kerry in 2004, which allowed George W. Bush to beat him.
He told the Prague audience, correctly, that Kerry might have won the election if he'd responded more quickly to the attack ads.
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GOP Consultant Weds His Male Partner
Mr. Finkelstein has frequently come under criticism by gay rights groups for representing politicians who have been ardent foes of gay rights. He helped create the template for a line of attack he repeatedly invoked against Democrats, including Mario M. Cuomo of New York, describing them as liberal.
In Israel, Mr. Finkelstein used similar attacks against the Labor Party as an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and as a consultant to the winning and losing campaigns of Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister.
Mr. Finkelstein has regularly described himself as a libertarian who supports same-sex marriage and abortion rights while opposing big government. In an interview with Maariv, an Israeli newspaper, after the American elections last year, he criticized the Republican Party as growing too close to evangelical Christians, warning it could cause long-term damage to the party.
Details of Mr. Finkelstein's relationship have appeared in regular news accounts over the years, as they did in the Boston Magazine article, which reported that Mr. Finkelstein lived with his partner and two children in Ipswich, Mass.
Still, some conservative friends said Mr. Finkelstein's marriage would roil conservatives and highlight divisions among them over the importance of social issues to their movement.
"In recent years, Arthur hasn't pretended to be a social conservative," said one longtime conservative associate, who cited Mr. Finkelstein's aversion to publicity in declining to be identified. "But this is the same man who was the architect of Jesse Helms's political rise."
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#82: Arthur "Element of Hypocrisy" Finkelstein
"GOP Consultant Weds His Male Partner" (New York Times, 4/9/2005). There's a headline you don't see every day. Not that there's anything wrong with it. It wouldn't be worth mentioning if the consultant hadn't, through most of the 40 years of that domestic partnership, worked on behalf of some of America's most rabidly homophobic politicians; if he wasn't "the architect of Jesse Helms's political rise"; if he wasn't acclaimed as "the guy who slandered the term 'liberal' in American politics"; if he hadn't worked for presidents Nixon and Reagan; helped elect the likes of George W. Bush, New York Governor George Pataki, Senator Alphonse D'Amato, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "To the Right of Attila Sharon" Netanyahu; advised Sharon; helped the Swift Boat Smearers for Bush smear John Kerry's military reputation; and announced that he would be spearheading the "Get Hillary" campaign to defeat Senator Clinton's reelection campaign in 2006.
All that, and more, is on Arthur Finkelstein's resume. If you haven't heard of him before, it's because he made sure you didn't. As CNN reported in 1996: "He is the stuff of Hollywood: A man who can topple even the most powerful foes, yet so secretive that few have ever seen him." Finkelstein has been compared to criminal mastermind Kaiser Sose in The Usual Suspects, who lay so low that some doubted he really existed. CNN captioned its photo, "Only known photo of Arthur Finkelstein." This after 20 years in big-time politics.
Finkelstein, a Massachusetts resident, helped direct Republican strategy in 33 Senate races in 1996 alone. Typical Finkelstein ad lines: "Call liberal Paul Wellstone. Tell him it's wrong..." "That's liberal. That's Jack Reed. That's wrong. Call liberal Jack Reed..." "That's the Finkelstein formula," Democratic consultant Mark Mellman told CNN: "Just brand somebody a liberal, use the word over and over again..." Clients called this "Finkel-think." Among Finkelstein's most outspokenly homophobic clients were Lauch Faircloth (R-NC), Jesse Helms (R-NC), Don Nickles (R-OK), and Bob Smith (R-NH) -- four senators whose opposition helped defeat a bill banning anti-gay job discrimination. "I think it's clear that there is an element of hypocrisy where [Finkelstein] lives this kind of sedate, gay lifestyle while making millions of dollars off of candidates who bash gays," Stephen Rodrick, who outed the Fink in a 1996 article in Boston Magazine, told CNN.
(Harper, Good for the Jews) Nor did being Jewish stop Finkelstein from helping to constantly remind voters in a 1978 South Carolina Congressional race that the Democratic candidate, Max Heller, was Jewish. (A poll Finkelstein conducted for the Republican, Carroll Campbell, referred to Campbell as "a native South Carolinian" and Heller as "a Jewish immigrant." Five days before the election, an independent candidate jumped in -- allegedly at the Republicans' behest -- and attacked Heller for not "believ[ing] in Jesus Christ." Heller lost by less than 6,000 votes.)
A classic Finkel-think tactic was the "independent expenditure" campaign, which, by remaining technically unaffiliated with any candidate, "can avoid spending limits while pummeling Democrats with ads GOP candidates can later disavow," Time explained. The beauty of this arrangement, a Fink colleague once explained, is that "a group like ours [Finkelstein's National Conservative Political Action Committee] could lie through its teeth, and the candidate stays clean."
Finkelstein's wedding, which was disclosed by an associate, took place in December 2004. "None of Mr. Finkelstein's better-known political clients" attended, the Times noted.
Finklestein -The Unseen Power Broker (Haaretz)
Finkelstein's low-profile nature also has extended to the American Jewish community. He has strong ties with pro-Israel officials he helped elect, including Jewish Republican politicians; privately, he has some close relationships with American Jewish community leaders, but those relationships also tend to be behind the scenes in keeping with his general style, observers say.
Recently, he gave a rare television interview. Last month he told Channel 2 that the new joint Likud-Yisrael Beitenu list is likely garner a large number of seats - some 45 together - after January's election.
"I have believed for several years that such a union is a good move," Finkelstein said in the interview. "Separately, Netanyahu and Lieberman have a similar electorate and each will contribute something to the other - together they are much more powerful."
It is precisely the prospects of that kind of mega power that has members of Israel's center and left concerned, not to mention even those in the more moderate camp within Likud. Foreign Minister Lieberman has made his mark as one of Israel's more polarizing political personalities with a penchant for rousing distrust of the country's Arab citizens and pushing legislation that many within Israel view as anti-democratic.
Finkelstein is betting his new duo fares better than his client back home named Mitt Romney.
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Related - More on the Harper Finkelstein Connection
Anonymous said (October 24, 2014):
Arthur Finkelstein is queer? ('not that there's anything wrong with that - not') Just confirms what a CHARADE DC politicians put on, doesn't it? The so called 'Religious Right' - Jerry Falwell - with his offices down the street from Reagan White House - and Reagan - knew full well that the US elected government is - as an insider told me in DC in 1977 - "half the Senate is gay and the other half likes little girls".
That's how you get "a head" in DC politics - AIPAC doesn't back a candidate unless he's a real sick puppy to begin with, and they just make it worse. The easier to yank their chain if they ever think for a minute of standing up on their own hind legs.
Oh no. Only snakes and worms get PAC money.
I got a good glimpse inside the political culture in capitol cities of states and DC. It's upside down from what their constituents are led to believe. They're a subculture (politicians). On the inside, behind the doors, at the 'after-parties' -- they REVEL in being the opposite of what they present to the public. And the PRESSTITUTES of media are partying right there with 'em. Guarding their secrets - unless they get 'the phone call' (nowdays it's 'the text') to 'throw mamma from the train'.