"WalterM140" wrote:
Oh, yes. There is a Republican party dirty tricks apparatus:

"Donald H. Segretti (born September 17, 1941) was a political operative
for the
Nixon White House during the 1970s. Segretti ran a campaign of dirty
tricks
against the Democrats. His actions were part of the larger Watergate
Scandal.

He went to prison in 1974 after pleading guilty to three misdemeanor
counts of
distributing illegal campaign literature. A major part of this was a faked
letter on Edmund Muskie's letterhead falsely alleging that senator Henry
"Scoop" Jackson had had an illegitimate child with a 17-year-old.

The New Hampshire primary that year occurred in March 1972 and the
distribution of the "Muskie" letter occurred prior to that event.
The law Segretti pled guilty to didn't actually go into effect until April
1972 (the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971). So while it might be
classified as "dirty tricks" the distribution of the Muskie letter before
the New Hampshire primary would not have been illegal at that time - so any
of the politicians in the Presidential race that year could have legally
distributed the "Muskie" letter prior to the law going into effect in April
1972.