If you ran for office, how dirty would you get? Could you be mean.....

[Wetzelbill]

if it came to that?

As someone who is seriously considering running for office, I wonder about that. I probably won't need to, because my district is safe for Dems and it's very small. Simple hard work would get it done, I think. But say if I ran for Congress, Senate or Governor someday, I might have to get nasty or risk getting blown out by 20 points.

I think it would depend on my oppenent. If I ran against a far-right ratty nut job, well, bring 'em on. I could get dirty. Start whispering campaigns. Be somewhat Rove-like.

But I'd still feel like my honor was tainted. So does the ends justify the means.

I know if I was Kerry - or a Kerry advisor - I would have been attacking Bush constantly. His grandfather was a Nazi sympathizer. His family has bin Laden ties. He sat his ass down and read a children's book when our country was attacked. He may have paid for an abortion. He went AWOL. He's a corporate crook. He's exploited 9/11. I would have gotten ugly. That guy has done too much wrong to let go.

Republicans are chickenshit mean, and it works for them. I'm not advocating being a no account coward to the extent they are, but I am saying there is a time when Dems need to preemptively kick some ass.

That time is now. Well, it was a long time ago, but better late than never.

[meegbear]

1. I'd start rumors my opponent had sex with their mother ...

regardless of sex.

Then, I'd take the gloves off.

[Todd B]

2. Not me.

This is probably the reason I would never run for office, but I don't think I would.

I think that while the other side is attacking, you have to be out there offering the citizens a plan rather then just a partisan battle. Don't get me wrong, I would still respond back to any attacks on my record but I don't think I'd stoop to Rovian swift boat spear tactics.

[JRob]

3. All you need to do is tell the truth and document it...

The GOP has dug such a huge hole that simply making people see the truth should be affective...

Although that task alone is a mountainous undertaking.

[XemaSab]

4. There is definitely a time for an ugly smear campaign

but the 2004 election wasn't it.

Why?

"Smear campaign" carries the implication that you are telling lies.

Kerry could have said a million things about Bush that weren't lies, but the plain truth. And he should have done it.

[Beaver Tail]

6. I would be brutally Honest

Stick with indisputable facts and show contradiction of others running for office.

I would NEVER apologize for honest remarks, answer questions directly (never walk around) and point out EVERY time someone else avoided hard questions.

Edited for typos (as usual)

[XemaSab]

9. Exactly

n/t

[napi21]

5. I would look for dirt, but NO LIES!

That's why I would never run for office.

[blm]

7. Except the GOP controls most of broadcast media. Your attacks would be

made to make you out to be a nutcase, while the media countered every one of your attacks with trumped up stories that prove you are the one lying.

It's easy for Republicans to be chickenshit mean and nasty when they have a media that portrays them as being men of God motivated by patriotism and love of country.

The media would never tell the truth that the GOP is evil and motivated by fascist goals and love of money and power.

[Deep13]

8. "But I'd still feel like my honor was tainted."

Why? Why would telling the truth be dishonorable?

[Wetzelbill]

14. If I stuped to a Saxby Chambliss lever yeah it would be

[Hippo_Tron]

20. What if your opponent stups to Saxby Chambliss' level?

Doesn't that mean that he deserves to have an attack ad run against him calling him a huge chickenhawk (which is the truth).

[Dr.Phool]

10. It depends

If you're in a primary, you risk tarring your own party. In the general election, I think the gloves come off. But it has to be the truth. I was working for a candidate last year, and we had plenty of dirt on her opponent, but she refused to use it. It ended up that we got zero media coverage, and lost, even though my candidate was much more qualified for the job.

The funniest time came in the Florida U.S Senate primary when Mel Martinez was calling wing-nut Bill McCollum a tool of the Homosexual and Gay community. It was so bad, that the St. Pete Times rescinded their endorsement of him.

Also Peter Deutsche kept tarring Betty Castor with Sami Al Arien in the primary, and it carried over into the general election and she lost by a slim margin.

[Javaman]

11. I have a problem with being blunt and truthful to a fault...

Therefore, I'm not political material.

[Chan790]

12. I'd be swimming in the muck

As low as I needed to go as long as there was truth to what I was saying. For example: I see no problem was refering to G.W. Bush as "George W. Bush, grandson of war profiteer and Nazi Prescott Bush" constantly and making allusions to those traits being genetic.

I think that's a large part of where the left has been failing for a generation or more, we don't muckrake and we won't match the GOP fling for fling. I think the blogosphere marks the turnaround of that but the 3 Democrats on the FEC board are about to take that away from us even, because they fear weakening McCain-Feingold on the premise that the big money will start flowing back into politics. (It seems too logical to just say that blogging is inherently media for them to just do that.)

Personally, I'm not sure that people who won't play "the game" deserve to be in "the game".

[melissinha]

13. I'd use the incumbent's voting record

If I were running against an incumbent of course.

BE forceful and resolute but don't play dirty.

[davsand]

15. Tell the truth ALWAYS, take the gloves off when you need to.

Going negative in a campaign too early is not a good plan. Voters need to know your candidate in some way other than a negative force. It is, however, always appropriate to tell the truth. You can tell it without being seen as shrill or a wingnut, too.

Most of the campaigns I have run are known for being balls to the wall, but honest. I will say, however, that it all hangs on the candidate and their personality. You can't take somebody that is a nice guy and make him into a pit bull any more than you can pass off a junkyard dawg as a poodle. If you try to and you don't ring true the voters will spot it. Worse yet, your candidate looks like they have board up their ass when they go out in public...

Personally, I have always joked that I want to run a campaign that has the slogan, "I never killed anyone." I always figured it had a nice ring to it and if they could prove you lied about it you were pretty much screwed anyhow...

I've dealt with the "knee level" campaigns that were made up of rumor and innuendo, and frankly, except in primaries, I don't think they accomplish anything. Voters are a whole lot more intelligent than they get credit for except when it is a personal/family fight.

Worst case, you can always go out front and say "I am not stooping to this, I am here to talk about serious government, not back yard slander." That one can really take the steam out of the whole mess, and it can really make your guy look like a high minded individual when properly and soberly delivered.

I'll do what I have to do in order to win as long as it is ethical and true.


Laura

[lojasmo]

16. I would be an absolute bastard. EOM

[Dr Fate]

17. That's what DEMs dont get- we dont have to get dirty- just tell the truth.

"I'm not slinging mud- I'm just calling my opponent a liar. Which he is. Allow me to present you with his actual untrue quotes along with dates & times...Perhps when you interview him you can ask him to explain himself..."

"Sorry, but my opponent says things that are not true- that makes him a "liar" by definition-if the truth hurts, so be it."

We dont need to go dirty or get mean, we just need to tell the blunt, unvarnished truth about Republicans. Never apologize, and challenge the media to prove why you should NOT make whatever charges you present.

[demwing]

18. You don't have to lie to play dirty

Have a rumor started that cannot be traced back to your campaign.

Then make the following announcement:

"There's a nasty rumor being circulated that claims that my opponent was charged with "(enter unspeakable crime here)" while he was in college/military, and that his influential family/political coanies managed to get the charges dropped and the record cleaned up.

"Though I have no comment on whether these claims are true, my oppononet could clear up all of this business by releasing ALL of his police/college/military records during that time period. Unfortunately, untill that happens it appears that some very important questions may never be answered."

Find the lie.

[Hippo_Tron]

19. I'd go on record saying I'll run positive if they run positive

But fighting back can be an important part of politics.

[SteppingRazor]

21. ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW IS HERE --

I'd do what LBJ would do. From Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing: Campaign '04

"Back in 1948, during his first race for the U.S. Senate, Lyndon Johnson was running about ten points behind, with only nine days to go. He was sunk in despair. He was desperate. And it was just before noon on a Monday, they say, when he called his equally depressed campaign manager and instructed him to call a press conference for just before lunch on a slow news day and accuse his high-riding opponent, a pig farmer, of having routine carnal knowledge of his barnyard sows, despite the pleas of his wife and children.

His campaign manager was shocked. "We can't say that, Lyndon," he supposedly said. "You know it's not true."

"Of course it's not true!" Johnson barked at him. "But let's make the bastard deny it!"

Johnson -- a Democrat, like Bill Clinton -- won that election by fewer than a hundred votes, and after that he was home free. He went on to rule Texas and the U.S. Senate for twenty years and to be the most powerful vice president in the history of the United States. Until now."


So, does the ends justify the means?
C'mon! This is POLITICS! You bet your sweet, pigfuckin' ass it does! Now get out there and make the bastard deny it.

[Outrider]

22. You know you've gone far enough,

when you pick up the morning paper and the headline read "(Insert Opponents Name) has commited suicide."

Seriously, in the primary don't go dirty unless your opponent has been declared fair game by the money people.

Once the general election starts, you need to time it correctly but attack them in on whatever front will do them the most damage. This doesn't mean that you should concentrate on converting their supporters, because driving their supporters away from voting works also. Your campaign also should insulate itself from the nastiest attacks and use people who have no visible connection to you to start those attacks.

And always remember. People say that they dislike dirty campaigns and that they'll vote against those who use dirty campaigns, but once they're in the voting booth they'll vote dirty every time.

[Totally Committed]

23. Are you serious?

I'd do whatever it took... stuff that would make Karl Rove blush!

TC

[foo_bar]

24. I posed this question to my niece last week

She's 12 years old and grounded, so I forced her to watch a Senate roll call on C-Span. I explained Sens. Kerry and McCain thusly: they didn't lie enough to become President. I talked about the Swift Boaties, "McCain has a black daughter!" in the SC primary, and other ways of Making Stuff Up for power and riches.

Now I should probably mention that my niece was grounded for lying. Thanks to the law of unintended consequences, telling the truth implies boring television, and lying means getting your own jet plane.

"The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them."