Letters to the Editor
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It's Not Just Brown
Blame the GOP Party strategists for the dirty tricks they continue to use every election.
The Repukes may denounce Brown publicly but under it all they are thankful for his dirty politics.
If we haven't seen the proof of GOP mischief over the past 15 years we are not looking too hard.
I cannot understand how anyone can support a GOP that preaches morality and "family values" and behaves the opposite.
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McCain Can't Denounce Brown
And that will prove fatal for him in the general election, a very different outcome from 1988.
The reason? McCain has sold his soul to the devil, and it's not just Brown, but a whole company of devils who would even associate with a person of the caliber of Brown, who should be contained, as in an aquarium, but who passes for human and avoids residency in a Poisonous and Unclassified Species section of a zoological farm.
I knew Lee Atwater well enough to know I liked him as a person, even though I detested his horrid approach to politics.
The same does not apply to Floyd Brown, who as I have already suggested, is Not of This Earth. It's not like McCain has hired Brown -- the arrangement is, in reality, more like McCain got too close to Brown and the rest and they got on him. He would have to set himeslf on fire to get rid of the curse.
Even if McCain decides to commit political suicide by trying to make some sort of show of criticizing the ethics and mores of Floyd Brown, et al, he'd still carry the stain with him to his mausoleum. The mistake is fatal. The disease is Terminal Power Addiction. Life has lost any meaning for John McCain beyond the ultimate promotion to Commander-in-Chief, and there is no way to save himself now. He's touched the leper. He is now one of them. He won't denounce Brown. He may try to use one of Brown's magic cures and say he's crossed some line, but it won't help.
Brown, for his part, has attached himself to an anchor which will take him and the rest of the neocon menagerie back to the bottom of the swamp.
Hide and watch. It's the Mistake of the Century. There's no going back.
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And...
And pigs fly and donkey's talk.
Brown, et all will continue to find work and will spawn many disciples that will continue their heinous dirty deeds in the future. There is much to be lost if the republicans lose their office squatting...
Think of the corporations that will lose money having to comply with actual rules and legislation and not the 'voluntary' crap that Bush passes off as 'meaningful'...
Republicans live in and fight from the sewer because it works.
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@pinky
And this is precisely what must change, and it will. It will fall beneath its own weight.
I'm a lifelong registered Republican and I have nothing but contempt for what my party has become. I do believe in a choice, in a balance of traits, of different kinds of parties which offer alternatives and work together to create a whole greater than the sum of their parts.
This isn't what we have right now, and things have to go through cycles of change; overnight revolutions rarely bring any good with them.
So this long dark night of the Republican soul is slowly ending, but not before the party is utterly discredited -- by the worst elements with which it has associated itself.
Meanwhile there are far better choices across the aisle. I have no problem with going there.
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President McCain
People bitch and moan about these sleazy tactics, but they work everytime. this election will be no exception. And don't expect John McCain and the Republicans to be held to the same standards as Obama and the Democrats. Are John McCain's feet being held to the fire over Rev. Hagee like Barack Obama's are over Rev. Wright? It aint gonna happen. The Republicans get away with this because the media is a will partner and a large swath of the public laps it up.
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Who's really to blame?
Of course Floyd Brown and others of his ilk are scumbags, but what is sad and frightening is how they use the MSM to disseminate their message. I believe Glen Greenwald has written about this again and again. Brown and others like him create these ads and they become "news" only because the MSM deems it "newsworthy." They play the ads for free, and "debate" the pieces as if there actually might be something there. What's left is a vague and false meme that unsophisticated voters internalize, i.e. Dukais is a crime coddling wussy, the Clintons are socialist pagan murderers, Kerry is weak effeminate idiot who lied about his war record, and, now, Obama is a terrorist sympathizing America hater. Again, the news (especially the 24 hour news channels) discuss these canards as if there might be a there, there.
So I don't really blame Brown and his type for being assholes. Hey a rattlesnake is a rattlesnake, and will bite you if given a chance. I blame the so-called news media for validating their existence, for actually giving their ideas the time of day. It is akin to a journalist getting a "man on the street" opinion from the schizophrenic homeless guy who shits himself and believes alien insects have infected his body then presenting it as conventional wisdom.
This, of course, begs the question: Why are MSM journalists, reporters, and anchors so stupid and lazy? Do they know they are being used? Do they care?
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Stop the whining and start winning
Joe,
What irks people the most about the Willie Horton ad was not its content but that it worked as well as it did. That's the problem with the Dems: they don't understand that negative ads really work. In a general election, it's the best return for the advertising buck as most Dem candidates have found out the hard way. The only recent Dem that kinda "gets it" is Bill Clinton and, of course, Hillary. In a nutshell, when the Dems go negative, it is seen as "mean", while, if the Repugs go negative, it is seen as "informative". This boils down to the target audience for the ad, namely, the undecideds or the "tilters" one-way or the other. Negative ads help "low information" voters make up their minds. On the other hand, "high information" voters, who are usually firmly situated in one camp or the other find them annoying or insulting. In 1988 GHWB was down 18-20% with 45 days to go because there was a very high "undecided" group that he felt was within his reach.
As recent history shows, the Dems have had a harder time changing the minds of republicans than the other way around. Thus for the Dems, negative ads don't hit the mark as effectively, so they tend to lose close elections or get blown out.
Shame on Dukakis if he thought giving weekend passes to convicted killers was a smart thing to do if he thought he was going to run for president someday. It's like Obama now figuring out that Rev Wright could cost him the election. Rev Wright will be Exhibit A for the Repugs as to why Obama is unfit to be president.