ORIGINAL SIN, Chapter Seven

Lee Atwater's infamous Willie Horton campaign ads got Geroge Herbert Walker Bush elected 43^rd President of the United States in November of 1988, winning 426 electoral votes over Micheal Dukasus's 111 electoral votes. However the popular vote was much closer, with Bush winning by only 8.5 million out of the 91 million cast. But it was enough to be spun as a landslide. Lee Atwater was rewarded by making him Republican National Chairman. He could now the stamp of his personality on the entire party. And he began doing that immediately.

Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger". By 1968, you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you...So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and...cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites....So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the back-burner.”

Lee Atwater

Atwater's first target was the new Democratic Speaker of the House, Tom Foley from the state of Washington. He had voted for the Voting Civil Rights Act of 1965 and Civil Rights Act of 1968, the bill making Martin Luther King's junior's birthday a federal holiday, and he help override President Reagan's veto of the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987.

The very day Foley was sworn in as Speaker, the RNC released a memo written by Communications director Mark Goodin and Minority Whip Newt Gingrich. It was vintage Atwater, and was titled, “Tom Foley: Out of the Liberal Closet”. The memo compared Foley's voting record with that of Congressman Barney Frank, who was openly gay. Of course, as both men were Democrats, it would have been shocking if their voting records had been in conflict.

When challenged by the press Atwater insisted the memo was factually accurate”, but the the party leadership condemned the gay bashing of an old colleague, even if he was a Democrat. Senator Bob Dole called the the memo “garbage”, and the press corps refused to repeat is homophobic hints. Realizing Lee had gone too far, President Bush forced Atwater to fire Goodin. But as he had his entire life, Atwater gave ground grudgingly. 

“I’ve always thought running for office is a bunch of bullshit. Being in a office is even more bullshit. It really is bullshit,” he wrote. “I’m proud of the fact that I understand how much BS it is.”

Lee Atwater

Then on 5 March, 1990, Atwater collapsed at a fundraising breakfast and suffered a seizure. A CatScan discovered a grade 3 astrocytoma brain tumor. Despite aggressive treatment, including experimental radiation implants, the boy wonder was left paralyzed on his left side and in sever pain, with the cancer having spread. Still he would not resign as chairman of the RNC.

Soon afterward, Lee was visited by the ninety year old conservative Jesuit Priest Father John Hardon,  According to Hardon, “I introduced myself and then began the shortest instruction in the faith that I have ever given.” The instruction in Catholicism was, in total, about ten hours, over two days, provided to a very sick man. But Father Hardon also added, “every minute that I was in Lee’s room, there was someone from the Republican Party. So Lee was never left alone with me.” Hardon also said, “...it was very clear that he was in what I would call protective custody.” His keepers were, the Republican party, and one is left to wonder if they feared this conversion might be real, leading to even a semi-public confession.

Aware that he was dying, Lee Atwater began to write letters of apology to many of his victims, and others visited him in the Washington D.C. hospital where they gave him comfort by accepting his words. But he spent most of the last year of his life confined there.  But he did not resign from the RNC until January of 1991.  Father Hardin insists Lee converted to Catholicism, and was presented with a bible. Atwater died on March 29, 1991. He was 40 years old. However Lee Atwater's funeral service was held in a Protestant Church, and he was buried in a Protestant graveyard.

After Atwater's death, Bush White House Communications director Ed Rollins (above) told Mary Matalin, who ran the RNC for the year Atwater was in the hospital, how much comfort Lee had drawn from the bible he received from Father Hardon's organization. But Matalin responded, “Ed, when they were cleaning up his things afterwards, the bible was still wrapped in cellophane and had never been taken out of the package.”

Since his own death, Father Hardin, is being groomed for sainthood, despite his being disciplined for allowing a priest who molested children being given access to even more children. For that moral failure the Jesuits forbid Hardon from teaching at any Jesuit institutions. Father Hardon referred to this punishment as his “white martyrdom.”

Almost every acolyte of Lee Atwater moved on to support Donald Trump in all three of his runs for President. Roger Stone (above, center), who learned hatred and manipulation at Atwater's feet, described his teacher this way, " “We both knew he believed in nothing....I had the feeling that he sold his soul to the devil, and the devil took it."  Another student, Tucker Eskew said that after Lee, "Resentment became the future of the Republican Party."

And whatever damage that Trump does to the American political and moral soul, should be laid at the cold dead feet of Lee Atwater and those who invited him to enter their house.

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