In his January 20 column, nationally syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak wrote that “Former Clinton Adviser” Dick Morris is “asking for a contribution between $25 and $100 or more to finance a critical film documentary of Sen. Hillary Clinton.” According to Novak, in a mailing sent out by The Presidential Coalition, a group run by Republican activist and discredited former congressional staffer David Bossie, Morris wrote: “If you liked how the Swift Boat Veterans turned the tide against John Kerry, you understand how a top Clinton aide can turn the tables and stop a Clinton-style liberal from becoming the next president of the United States.”
Morris writes a regular, syndicated column that appears in The Hill, a Washington, D.C., newspaper, as well as several other newspapers nationwide. Morris' columns are also featured on his personal website, Vote.com, as well as conservative media outlets such as Human Events Online, NewsMax.com, right-wing pundit David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com, and Family Security Matters.
As Media Matters for America documented, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (now Swift Vets and POWs for Truth) conducted a smear campaign against Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) during the 2004 presidential campaign, falsely attacking and distorting Kerry's Vietnam service record. Media Matters has also documented numerous Morris falsehoods and smears of Democrats. Most recently, Morris falsely claimed that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) voted against an amendment to a Senate ethics reform bill that would have prevented legislators from hiring family members to their campaign committees and political action committees. In fact, Obama voted against a measure to table, or effectively kill, the amendment. Morris subsequently apologized and retracted the allegation.
In addition to his syndicated column, Morris frequently appears on Fox News as a “political analyst,” and has often attacked Sen. Clinton. As Media Matters noted, on the December 18 edition of Hannity & Colmes, Morris claimed he would “leav[e] the country” if a presidential ticket of Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) were to win the White House." On the December 5 edition of The Big Story with John Gibson, Morris called Sen. Clinton a “liar”:
MORRIS: Well, that's the -- it's one of these Hillary lies. When she learned that Bill had been with Monica [Lewinsky] because of the stain on the dress, she had to pretend that she didn't know a year earlier when he told her, so that she could defend having called it a vast right-wing conspiracy.
Here, she spent two years telling New Yorkers she's undecided about running for president so they'd get her -- get them to re-elect her to the Senate, and now she has to go through this pantomime, the charade of decision-making so she doesn't look like a liar for the last two years --
GIBSON: All right now, what about Barack Obama --
MORRIS: -- which she is.
According to the group's website, The Presidential Coalition “exists to educate the American public of the value of having principled conservative Republican leadership at all levels of government.” The website features whitewashed profiles of every Republican president since Abraham Lincoln. For example, Richard Nixon's profile contains no mention of the Watergate scandal, instead noting simply that Nixon “resigned in 1974.” George W. Bush's profile contains no mention of the Iraq war, but simply notes that “after the September 11th irruptions, he announced war on terrorism, and with that made victory.”