isn’t this just precious…

Posted on Sunday 10 September 2006


Republicans are planning to spend the vast majority of their sizable financial war chest over the final 60 days of the campaign attacking Democratic House and Senate candidates over personal issues and local controversies, GOP officials said.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, which this year dispatched a half-dozen operatives to comb through tax, court and other records looking for damaging information on Democratic candidates, plans to spend more than 90 percent of its $50 million-plus advertising budget on what officials described as negative ads.

Okay, this is really special. The campaign strategy is to dig up dirt on local candidates and splash it all over the T.V. Screens of America – a truly Christian approach. Talk about a hard hitting, debate the issues strategy. I think it needs to be named – something like "toilet tactics" or "mud pie" politics or "dirt dauber-ing"- maybe even "Rove, out of the closet." I wonder if the Republican candidates are going to go along with it?

If this weren’t such serious business, it would be funny in that 1940’s melodramatic movie sort of way, with bad music in the background:

"All right boys, let’s get all the dirt and spread it all over the streets."
"Gee, Mr. Rove, that sounds like a swell idea!"
"You always know the right thing to do."

But it’s not a Bogart thriller. It’s real life. They’re counting on the American people to be a very foolish lot – falling for a concerted campaign of nastiness-mining to get away from the issues like Congressional corruption, Executive deceit and secrecy, an ill-conceived and mismanaged war, and general incompetence to name just a few things just for starters. Are we really that gullible?

Looks like we’re going to find out. If we take a lesson from the master of dirty politics, the way Karl Rove manages criticism of either himself or his people is to simply ignore it – whether it’s right or wrong.

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