Dukakis Strikes Back, Calls GOP’s Tactics McCarthyism

Democratic presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis, launching a stinging counteroffensive against assaults from George Bush, today likened Republican tactics this year to the McCarthy era and declared that people “can smell the garbage.”

The tough comments from the Massachusetts governor, who has been searching for a way to effectively fight charges from Bush over issues such as the Pledge of Allegiance, came in a speech at East Texas State University, where ex-House Speaker Sam Rayburn attended college.

Reminding the people of Rayburn’s efforts to pass legislation to reform Wall Street practices, Dukakis said the Republicans at the time “put together the biggest and most vicious campaign of propaganda, lobbying and intimidation ever seen. They attacked Sam Rayburn and Franklin Roosevelt and they called them communists.”

“And those Republican tactics haven’t changed a bit,” Dukakis contended. “Just as they did to Franklin Roosevelt and Sam Rayburn, now they’re attacking my patriotism. And just as they did in the 1930s and the 1950s, the American people and the people of Texas can smell the garbage.”