Has the politics of fear and smear run it's course?

[dajoki]

MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15110582/

Oct. 24, 2006 | 11:00 a.m. ET
The tsunami is coming
Bob Shrum

There’s no way to spin a tsunami except in advance. Karl Rove is busy trying to convince people that it’s not coming or that retread arguments like terrorism and taxes are a seawall that will protect Republicans against it in the midterm elections. But come November 8th, I believe the Republican majorities in the House, and even the Senate, are likely to be under water. The domestic political equivalent of Cheney’s absurd claim that we’re making progress in Iraq -- the pretense that nothing fundamental has changed in Washington -- would only carry the White House from defeat to derision.

The amazing thing about elections is that they count the votes -- usually. And the voters get to decide why they’re casting their ballots. The Republican ads featuring Osama bin Laden -- how I wished they’d captured him for real instead of on film -- represent worn-out appeals that no longer have the credibility to persuade Americans that Democrats, as Bush crudely put it recently, don’t want to win the war on terror. The country knows all too well that Bush is losing in Iraq, and now maybe even in Afghanistan, while North Korea tests nuclear weapons, Iran develops them, and terrorist cells have proliferated across the globe. Similarly, beating the tin drum of taxes has little or no resonance with the American people. A decisive majority in this election can’t be built on an appeal to repeal estate taxes for those poor souls who have over $10 million. It might have been clever to call it “the death tax,” but this trick is all but dead right now.

The Republicans and Rove may not have noticed what every poll is reporting -- that the top issues are Iraq, stagnant wages, outsourcing and healthcare. They may not have noticed, as they celebrate the rise in the Dow Jones average, that there are now two economies—the economy of stock quotes and GDP stats—and the economy of standards of living that haven’t risen since Bush raised his hand and took the oath as he entered an office that was handed to him by a one-vote margin on the Supreme Court.

The Republicans have also seen their ultimate political safety net -- a claim to superior moral values -- shredded by Mark Foley’s e-mails, the House leadership’s cover-up, Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Tom DeLay, and Bob Ney. The party of moral values stands revealed as the party of moral bankruptcy. Gay-baiting about same-sex marriage -- sometimes from within some congressional closet; have all the doors been opened yet? – is becoming as ineffective as it is unworthy.

So the more lurid the Republican attack ads are, the wider the Democratic margin in the polls seems to be. In November, I believe America will send a clear message: the era of unaccountable government is over; the time for corrupt government has passed; the politics of fear and smear, which nearly failed in 2004, has finally had its ugly day.

[blm]

1. I agree - the more Gore and Kerry have been PROVEN RIGHT on serious issues

the more unseemly it has become that they were smeared so cravenly and immaturely on matters that bore no relevance to our everyday reality and world situation.

I think the GOP machine jumped that shark with the Michael Schiavo smearing so close to the yearlong smearing of Kerry.

[HereSince1628]

2. Unfortunately, it probably won't ever really go away.

It's a powerful motivator of conservative behavior. Although people may be onto the the false fear and attempts by the Bushits to terrorize us into conservative behavior, down the road expect this game to re-appear.

[jwirr]

4. Fear never goes away entirely but action defeats fear. If the people

are given something that they can do that gives them hope then fear is lessoned.

[neuvocat]

3. It did a long, long time ago.

A lot of people like myself grew up in the era of the Cold War so the idea of nuclear war wasn't new. Madmen are still madmen whether or not they are heads of state, so there is very little difference when either of them have the bomb. It is easy to get jaded when the comparisons of democrats to terrorists sound just like the ones made of democrats to communists.

You get sick and tired of being scared and after a while you say "enough is enough". As far as what you're saying about the corrupt government, well what Bush did with going to Iraq for oil isn't entirely new (Teddy Roosevelt did it with the Panama canal). However the difference is that Bush did it in front of a wired world. If anything, the light has been shed on his wrongdoings and he has much more scrutiny to deal with than past governments.

[dajoki]

5. Yet he seems to keep getting away with it...

Maybe that will end on November 7.

[mloutre]

6. the scut-and-scum rethuglicans...

...are primed to be hoist by their own petards two weeks from now.

And it couldn't possibly happen to a nicer bunch of folks.


shrubiana delenda est,
Otter