Polimom’s no different from every other goo-goo eyed mama about AC’s babyhood.
She was perfect; looking back through my adoring, rose-colored glasses, even her diapers were rarely (and barely) soiled… or at least, they were cleaner than this year’s campaign tactics (WaPo):
On the brink of what could be a power-shifting election, it is kitchen-sink time: Desperate candidates are throwing everything. While negative campaigning is a tradition in American politics, this year’s version in many races has an eccentric shade, filled with allegations of moral bankruptcy and sexual perversion.
At the same time, the growth of “independent expenditures” by national parties and other groups has allowed candidates to distance themselves from distasteful attacks on their opponents, while blogs and YouTube have provided free distribution networks for eye-catching hatchet jobs.
[snip]
The result has been a carnival of ugly, especially on the GOP side, where operatives are trying to counter what polls show is a hostile political environment by casting opponents as fatally flawed characters. The National Republican Campaign Committee is spending more than 90 percent of its advertising budget on negative ads, according to GOP operatives, and the rest of the party seems to be following suit.
This has to be the pettiest, most pathetic election season on record. It’s certainly the worst I’ve ever seen — and Polimom ain’t wet behind the ears, folks.
Yes, yes… I realize that both sides are stinkin’ up the diaper pail, but there’s a world of difference between “normal” negative campaigning and rooting around in someone’s closet for dirty, unwashed onesies. They both smell bad, but dang it, is it absolutely necessary to wave petty, and sometimes fanciful, foulness right in our faces?
I don’t think so.
Over at the Moderate Voice, Michael van der Galien wonders why WaPo’s article harps on the Republicans, but the GOP told us that this was how they intended to campaign, and by golly, they finally delivered on something. (From factcheck.org)
The ads being aired by both the NRCC and its rival, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, are overwhelmingly negative. However, the DCCC ads generally attack Republican candidates on policy issues or their performance in office – accusing them of casting votes favorable to drug or oil companies, or of supporting President Bush’s unpopular policies in Iraq or on Social Security. We’ve recently criticized factual inaccuracies we’ve seen in some of those, and we’ll have more to say in a later article. Here we focus on the NRCC’s ads, which are much more likely to demean an opponent’s character. That’s the very definition of political mudslinging.
Political mudslinging is sleazy and cheap… and it earned a big fat raspberry from Polimom at the polls this week.
I was already ticked off, of course. The conservative part of Polimom long-since concluded that this crop of politicians needs to be tossed out on its collective bottom; as Peggy Noonan wrote yesterday, “They want to fire Congress because they can’t fire President Bush.”
I don’t qualify as “they”, but count me among those who wants to get rid of this president, and by extension, everybody on the Hill. Obviously my disgust extends rather further… and deeper; I voted for a clean sweep.
From Tennessee to Missouri to Virginia to California, whispers, ads, and attacks are scraping the slime from the lime-deficient holes beneath strategic porta-potties everywhere. The putrid stench is flat-out toxic, and while Polimom’s not part of anybody’s “base”, I have to assume I’m not the only person whose eyes are watering from the fumes.
Holding my breath hasn’t turned me fluorescent blue, but all this has had an effect on me; I didn’t vote this week for a single Republican at the state or national level… and that, my friends, is a first.