Was Gary Hart Set Up?

[TomSea]

Excerpt:

Was Gary Hart Set Up?

What are we to make of the deathbed confession of the political operative Lee Atwater, newly revealed, that he staged the events that brought down the Democratic candidate in 1987?

...

Atwater had the strength to talk for only five minutes. “It wasn’t a ‘conversation,’ ” Strother said when I spoke with him recently. “There weren’t any pleasantries. It was like he was working down a checklist, and he had something he had to tell me before he died.”

What he wanted to say, according to Strother, was that the episode that had triggered Hart’s withdrawal from the race, which became known as the Monkey Business affair, had been not bad luck but a trap. The sequence of events was confusing at the time and is widely misremembered now. But in brief:

In late March 1987, Hart spent a weekend on a Miami-based yacht called Monkey Business. Two young women joined the boat when it sailed to Bimini. While the boat was docked there, one of the women took a picture of Hart sitting on the pier, with the other, Donna Rice, in his lap. A month after this trip, in early May, the man who had originally invited Hart onto the boat brought the same two women to Washington. The Miami Herald had received a tip about the upcoming visit and was staking out the front of Hart’s house. (A famous profile of Hart by E. J. Dionne in The New York Times Magazine, in which Hart invited the press to “follow me around,” came out after this stakeout—not before, contrary to common belief.) A Herald reporter saw Rice and Hart going into the house through the front door and, not realizing that there was a back door, assumed—when he didn’t see her again—that she had spent the night.

Read more at: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/was-gary-hart-set-up/570802/?utm_term=2018-10-16T10%3A00%3A42&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=edit-promo&utm_medium=social

[Frank Cannon]

Ah bullshit.

[thackney]

[Frank Cannon]

Lee super glued Donna's ass to his lap to get that pic.

[Cyber Liberty]

The answer is, "Yes he was set up."  He was set up by Gary Hartpence.

[WilliamVA]

The answer is, "Yes he was set up."  He was set up by Gary Hartpence.

I agree, he walked into it, because he was susceptible.  He went on an unnecessary boat trip to
Bimini with a syncophant and two women.  He did it to himself, there and later in DC.  Whether
Atwater set it up or not doesn't matter.  Unlikely Atwater would have wasted time on it, if he didn't
know Hart was a fool.
   

[Cyber Liberty]

I agree, he walked into it, because he was susceptible.  He went on an unnecessary boat trip to
Bimini with a syncophant and two women.  He did it to himself, there and later in DC.  Whether
Atwater set it up or not doesn't matter.  Unlikely Atwater would have wasted time on it, if he didn't
know Hart was a fool.
 

Now that Lee is safely dead >25 years, it's time for The Atlantic to start dancing and urinating on his grave.  Leftists are so damned predictable.