Howard Kurtz, the highly regarded media critic who recently left the Washington Post to hang his shingle at the Daily Beast, has a great column about the Democrats' running very nasty ads throughout the nation against their Republican opponents:
We're talking ugly stuff here, accusing one opponent of threatening his wife, another of indifference to employee deaths, a third of trying to evict a child.
Par for the course, I suppose. And we can be sure worse are to come.
Kurtz also takes note that The Republicans are far from blameless -- throwing out some chum in the water as well. But the Democrats are leading the way (if one wants to characterize this type of campaigning that way). While GOP candidates focus on policies, the Democrats have other interests in mind.
The party is doing stuff that is too hot for candidates," says Evan Tracey, who tracks television advertising as president of the nonpartisan Campaign Media Analysis Group. "You see ad after ad going at them right between the eyes. It's personal, it's cutting. It's ‘here's what we found in the oppo dump and we're going to put it in the worst light possible.'"
The allegations, often based on selective use of facts, are fair game. But they also represent the kind of scorched-earth tactics that strategists employ when their clients are in danger of losing, and losing big. The party is spending heavily on these aerial attacks.
These are signs of desperation. But they may be backfiring as more voters seem resistant to the Democratic approach of branding Republican as extremists . That strategy is backfiring, as is the strategy to brand Tea Party followers nuts and whackos. Voters are not buying what Democrats are peddling. I suppose there is no "Truth in Advertising Laws" for political advertising; and no ethical standards for liberal media as they hungrily accept the ads and the Democratic dollars that go with them.
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