Posted on 06/06/2008 12:00:18 PM PDT by StilettoRaksha
Halloween has come early this year: Republicans have forgotten how to run without scare tactics.
This year it’s Illinois Sen. Barack Obama’s turn as the Democratic goblin, with House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as the witch on a broomstick. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is the vampire slayer and ghostbuster who will save us from the creatures of the night.
These fear tactics didn’t work in the three special House elections this year, and they’re not going to work in November.
Are we supposed to be scared of Democrats as big spenders? The Bush administration and congressional Republicans topped Democratic spending on every front. Even excluding the “War on Terror,” Republicans have busted the budget.
The Democrats are going to raise our taxes? No doubt they will, but, because of the Republicans’ massive deficits, our children and grandchildren are going to be crushed by tax hikes or hyperinflation.
The Democrats are corrupt miscreants? Compared to the Bridge to Nowhere-planning, bribe-taking, page-trolling Republicans?
How about, as Bob Dole once put it, the threat of sending our youth off to “Democrat Wars”?
Never mind.
As it becomes more and more clear that the Republicans have nothing to run on, the campaign will get nastier and more personal, centered on Obama. As the real Halloween approaches, it will get worse and then continue until Election Day.
Fortunately for Obama, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has been hitting him with the Republican playbook for the past month or two, as she got more and more desperate. It didn’t work for her, and I don’t think it will work for Republicans.
To be sure, Obama has to define himself in positive tones before the Republicans succeed in defining him as a secret Muslim agent who’s going to sell us to terrorists. But he has by far the best campaign organization I’ve seen this year, and if, with much of the media in his pocket, they can’t get his message out, they deserve to lose.
Negative campaigning is not the culprit. The job in any campaign, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, is to stress your positives and just as strongly stress your opponent’s negatives. We’ve had negative campaigning in America since Colonial days, and it works. That’s why it doesn’t go away despite the sermons from the “good government” crowd.
No, the culprit is not negative campaigning, but rather, campaigning without ideas that are arguably better than your opponent’s, and relying instead on bogeyman portrayals.
McCain has been the victim of bogeyman campaigning himself, and I know him to be an honorable man who doesn’t want to win that way. The problem is that McCain doesn’t have a coherent set of ideas with which he can simultaneously fire up the conservative base and attract independents. He’s a part-time liberal in conservative clothing. Conservatives aren’t fooled by that, and liberals aren’t going to vote for a part-time liberal when they have a very persuasive full-time liberal to vote for.
Republicans on the Hill have no message of what they are for, what their principles are or how they would govern. They can’t even agree to oppose big-government spending through earmarks.
“The lesser of two evils” is not a governing philosophy. Yet Republicans repeatedly try to seduce conservatives with it. That strategy didn’t work in 1948, 1960, 1974, 1976, 1992 or 2006 — and it won’t work in 2008.
Obama isn’t a goblin, nor Pelosi a witch, but the Republican majority of the ‘90s and 2000s is Humpty Dumpty, prostrate and shattered.
Someday, the GOP will rid itself of the leaders who brought the party to this point. Or maybe it won’t, and a new movement or a new party will rise up as the principal opposition to the liberal Democrats.
Until then, anti-Obama-ism will inexorably sweep across the land like those zombies in “Night of the Living Dead.” Now that’s scary.
An author and former magazine publisher, Viguerie is a longtime activist and fundraiser known for pioneering work in direct-to-citizens communications. He runs the website conservativehq.com .
I don’t see anything wrong with conservatives pushing relentlessly for more conservatism. Conservatives should never be satisfied.
If he were only just a goblin.
nor Pelosi a witch,
Change one letter to reverse the statement.
The Republican party is just as responsible for this mess. This goes beyond partisan politics into malfeasance and abdication of responsibility.
Incumbents, no matter what party, are toast. No one is going to listen to BS when the economy is in the toilet.
It would depend on whether that conservative looked good and could spout a bunch of empty 'feel good 'rhetoric.
So true. The GOP fear tactics have gone sour. They cannot even get the pillars of the party to want to support them.
We have problems within our country, the GOP is only focusing on Iraq with McLame at the helm.
This boat is going down.
Who said there was anything wrong with that? My criticism of Viguerie is that he's a pompous,uncharitable litmus-stamp extremist, a holier than thou chronic Chicken Little complainer given to over-the-top negativism who habitually paints decent public servants and fellow conservatives as feckless sell-outs and betrayers.
The boat has already sunk. I’m moving to France. :)
“The lesser of two evils” is not a governing philosophy. Yet Republicans repeatedly try to seduce conservatives with it.”
Not seduced, not even a little.
Duke Cunningham taking bribes...the gay Senators and Congressmen...perhaps if the GOP isn't going on the offensive then it's because they fear the 'pot calling the kettle black' analogy?
Yep. Sadly, the American people seem to make candidate selections on such things.
The American “Idle” voters should be proud. Personally I think it would have been wiser to nominate a real conservative and let his name recognition grow from there.
I would have paid good money to watch Duncan Hunter “debate” Obama.
No. REPUBLICAN incumbents running for re-election are screwed (along with conservatives who have VERY VERY few candidates down ballot to support and nobody at the top.) Democrats running for re-election will have no problem being re-elected since they are the candidates supported by the ignorant, foolish, brainwashed, non-thinking, and naive.
Viguerie's article is spot on as usual.
Agreed, they're both Marxists you air headed nit wit! Although I'm not absolutely sure about the witch part.
I take it you're pleased with all the Republican poseurs who run as conservatives and govern as liberals, aka CINOs.
You take wrong. Criticism of a perpetual malcontent like Viguerie is not a de facto endorsement of phony conservative pols.
That and the sudden disappearance of Global Warming.
On top of those 5 dollar home heat oil costs, expect a very long and cold Winter with skyrocketing unemployment. And there will be nothing any of the candidates can do about it that will not make it even worse.
It’s too late to start drilling our own oil now. It will take years to even see a difference on the price. Also, expect Israel to make a move on Iran. It just feels like it is going to happen soon. Especially if this economy goes sour. We won’t have the stomach or the courage to get involved.
“Obama isn’t a goblin, nor Pelosi a witch...”
“Agreed, they’re both Marxists you air headed nit wit! Although I’m not absolutely sure about the witch part.”
“Until then, anti-Obama-ism will inexorably sweep across the land like those zombies in “Night of the Living Dead.” Now that’s scary.”
I find this comment interesting, I guess Viguerie has resigned himself to the fact that McCain, the closet liberal, will win a very ugly race centered on bigotry (yeah, like Moveon.org etc...play by the rules and run positive campaigns based on ideas, give me a damn break) and thus nothing will get done for the next four years. My question is this, when will someone on our side tell me what the dem Congress’ plan is? All I ever hear is “it’s Bush’s fault, Bush lied, Bush spent too much, Repub corruption, etc....., but I never hear anyone talk about the 11% positive rating for the dem controlled Congress, both chambers at that. Good grief.
Then Viguerie just shouldn't speak the truth, and should shut his mouth and vote for more of it?
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