Posted on 06/24/2008 10:33:31 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The general election season is under way, and the leftists are already displaying their hypocrisy. They've launched pre-emptive warnings against a Republican "swiftboating" of Barack Obama at the same time they're making up wild allegations about the villainous ultraconservative plots against goodness planned by John McCain. The supposed civility police in the media are emphasizing the Obama warnings of a right-wing onslaught, but not the nasty leftist attacks on McCain. Once again, Republicans are painted as the agents of character assassination, while Democrats are angels whose style is sweet civility and whose substance is the refreshing truth.
Obama's campaign is putting up its dukes with a new website called "Fight the Smears." It's topped by an inspirational quote from Obama's June 3 victory speech. "What you won't hear from this campaign or this party is the kind of politics that uses religion as a wedge or patriotism as a bludgeon." In the words of the Almighty Barack, Team Obama pledges to steer clear of negative personal attacks, and avoid seeing their opponents "not as competitors to challenge, but enemies to demonize. Because we may call ourselves Democrats and Republicans, but we are Americans first. We are always Americans first."
The Democrats and the media are going to take a holiday from demonizing conservatives and Republicans? Ridiculous.
Try this exercise. Sign up for Fight the Smears electronic "Action Wire" alerts, and you receive this message from Obama's fundraisers: "Now take the next step and make a donation to help push back on the petty and divisive methods of our opponents."
So much for not demonizing the opponents.
Already, Obama's army of left-wing slime merchants is up on the television airwaves running ridiculous commercials. Did you see the one from MoveOn.org? It features a quavering blond mommy talking about how her baby makes her heart pitter-patter fiercely, but she's gravely concerned the baby might be going to war. "John McCain, when you say would stay in Iraq for a hundred years, were you counting on Alex? Because if you were, you can't have him."
What a pile of ridiculously inaccurate assumptions. First, we have an all-volunteer military. Second, even if President McCain were elected, he wouldn't serve in office for 18 years so he could make sure all the liberal babies of 2008 are sent to Iraq. USA Today was one of the few media outlets to suggest this ad was a foul ball. The Washington Post declared it "dramatically and personally" illustrated McCain's open-ended approach to Iraq better than Obama had done.
Just as Obama's media allies are silent about the left's hypocritical approach to negative campaigns, so, too, are they silent about nasty left-wing videos on YouTube. Robert Greenwald's "Brave New Films" collective has a commercial suggesting that under John McCain, contraceptives would be banned in America. They call their campaign "The Real McCain."
The ad is set in "President McCain's Women's Health Clinic." When a woman asks the perky blond nurse about her contraceptive options, she's handed a list. When the woman protests it's a blank piece of paper and repeats that she asked about birth-control options, the nurse cheerily replies: "And at the McCain Clinic, you don't have any."
Then a graphic reads: "John McCain voted against requiring insurance companies to cover prescription birth control." The fallacious argument within is that if the government doesn't pay for contraceptives, or force insurers to pay for contraceptives, then no contraceptives are available. There's no "option" to purchase your own condoms or birth-control prescriptions? Where are the media smear-fighters on this obvious howler?
Or take a virulent campaign called "I'm Voting Republican" from a firm accurately called Synthetic Human Pictures. Their Republicans are synthetic caricatures. A male doctor proclaims, "I'm voting Republican because I don't really want a cure for AIDS and breast cancer. They're just gays and women." This video clearly isn't meant to be factual, just vicious. This video has 2.3 million views at YouTube.
Cynical liberals think that the only way Obama can lose is for conservatives to take their well-traveled "low road" with negative ads. They've utterly forgotten -- if they ever acknowledged -- the low road they've traveled with millions of dollars in harsh ads against George W. Bush in the last two election cycles. Negative campaigning doesn't always work. But the media always see negative campaigning as a game only Republicans and conservatives play.
My Democrat secretary who always parrot’s the MSM’s take on everything “Bush Lied, People Died” annonunced today that “Obama scares me.” The ignorant, arrogant marxist is never going to sit in the oval office.
My father, died in the wool democrat, has never voted Republican, but he will vote for McCain and thus keep his record intact.
We must take these issues on and hit hard. You saw how vicious Obama was towards Hillary — and they are ideological cousins. They will be twice as obnoxius against McCain.
Browse through any You Tube videos that pertain to the Democratic primaries or for Obama in general. Experiment and post something that says something nice about Hillary — the Obamaites will sieze upon it like paranah fish. The hatred is there and it is much worse towards you and me.
Commie smears go unchallenged.Fixed it.
“Someone needs to go after Obama good and hard, or this guy is going to win in November! Team McCain and the GOP don’t seem to be up to it.”
You said it! This is my biggest concern - really hope we’re wrong, that they’ll pull out the big guns in time - I don’t get it, ‘cause I really believe that JSM wants to win and has the burning desire to, BUT he and his people simply must wake up to what they have to do, keep their eye on the prize. It’s still politics, after all, and THIS particular enemy must not be underestimated or treated with kid gloves.
“The ignorant, arrogant marxist is never going to sit in the oval office.”
From your lips to God’s ear (I pray)
There is a deeper irony. Liberals would have aborted the child in a partial-birth abortion. They kill more American babies in a month.
Just watch. They will be running commercials warning other liberal women they need to vote for Obama so they can kill their own babies in abortions! Obama said as much already in his "fruitcake" theology explanation of the Constitution and abortion.
They need to use all the ammo at their disposal against this idiot, and the beauty of it is, he's the one providing it all! Why use your own ammo when the enemy is giving you all the ammo you need to win? It's like neither party wants to win this election. The Dems nominated one of the most unelectable idiots possible, and the GOP is sitting on their asses, being defined by their screwball opponent, worrying too much about "offending" a bunch of dolts that hate them with a blind passion to begin with. It's freaking nuts!
The media is going to lie about them no matter what they do! If they're going to say you're taking the low road even when you aren't, then you may as well take the low road and really give them something to cry about! RNC: Stop trying to make friends with people that hate your guts and will never side with you, and start trying to win a winnable election by convincing that small margin in the middle that doesn't know who they're voting for yet. I am so sick of this damn party trying to placate their liberal haters. It's not going to work! They will never like you! Ever! When are the morons in the RNC going to figure that out?
Right on the money smedley. It still pisses me off that Republicans think they did something wrong in the Willie Horton ads. It was the freakin truth.
It just goes to show you the true mindset of the MSM, and it's only gotten worse since then. You know how it is, when you have a family member that the whole family is always having problems with and fighting with, well, that's fine, and it's OK for other family members to criticize that family member, but let an outsider do it, and it's a different story, and the family will "circle the wagons" to protect their family member. They'll say "yeah, he's an A-hole, but he's OUR A-hole, and WE'RE the only people allowed to call him an A-hole, you're not!" Well, that's the MSM. They don't mind when their own Dem/marxist family members are tearing each other's guts out, but oh boy, let one of the GOP "outsiders" step into the mix, and it's war baby! The MSM can't even operate under the illusion of objectivity anymore. That's how fargone they are. They'd rather sacrifice their last remaining shreds of tattered credibility than have Obama lose by being evenhanded. They're done, for good, as far as being a credible news reporting family, and really have been for years. They're not even trying to disguise their bias anymore, which they tried to do in the past, however poorly.
Screw their criticism. If you take the "family" analogy one step further, they're even worse. They're pre-emptively criticizing "outsiders" for saying bad things about their family member before they even say anything! It's like they're saying, "look, we KNOW what you're going to say about our family member, so you better not say it!"
They're loony toons! How the hell they can't be embarrassed every time they look in the mirror, I'll never know. Oh wait, maybe I do know! They aren't ashamed because they're the propaganda wing of marxists, and the ends always justify the means with marxist moonbats.
the media always see negative campaigning as a game only Republicans and conservatives play.
. . . because by "the media" we actually mean "journalism" - and the business model of modern journalism is all about perpetual crisis.That wasn't true before the mid-Nineteenth Century advent of the Associated Press, because "newspapers" then were about opinion since they
But modern journalism's defining characteristic is their perpetual claim that today's news is important, whereas yesterday's news is - well, yesterday's news. The planted axiom of which is that the news is bad and getting worse - perpetual "crisis." And in a crisis, the status quo, and therefore conservatism, is unacceptable.
- didn't have a newswire of perishable "news" stories that the locals had definitely not heard before the newspaper printed them, and
- were mostly only weeklies.
With that for a template, how could journalism fail to treat conservatives as pariahs?
BTTT
It was none other than Al Gore who brought up Willie Horton in the democrat primaries. I think it was in 1988.
You are correct!
Badabing.
The Clintons invented and perfected negative, destructive campaigning. That’s what is so maddening about this whole false thesis spewed by the so-called MSM, that the GOP invented this stuff.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.