Free Republic

A new attack ad against DeSantis has links to the bare knuckled political operative -------------snip--------------- Today an outfit called National Liberty Federation began airing about $290,000 in ads on radio and Fox News TV stations across Florida hammering Republican U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis: -------snip--------- The National Liberty Federation is run by a Palm Beach County resident named Everett Wilkinson, who used to call the group the South Florida Tea Party. Wilkinson for years has worked closely with Roger Stone, hosting a 2011 Boca Raton Trump rally that served as a harbinger of his presidential campaign, vocally supporting more casinos in...

More than half of the record spending on negative advertising during the 2016 presidential primary has been directed at a single candidate, Donald J. Trump, a barrage that threatens to undermine his candidacy even as he continues to march toward the Republican nomination. Of the more than $132 million spent on negative ads by candidates and the groups supporting them, nearly $70 million has gone to commercials assailing Mr. Trump, according to a New York Times analysis of data provided by Kantar Media/CMAG. The sharp focus on a single candidate is especially surprising given the exceptional size of the initial...

Watching all the negativity flying around the stage at the Democratic Town Hall Forum the other night, something struck me. Why, after watching Hillary and Bernie go after each other's left-liberal throats, would anyone ever want to vote for either one of them? They had nothing but rotten things to say about the other. Hillary's too cozy with Wall Street. Bernie's too soft on the NRA and naive about negotiating with Iran. Hillary's insufficiently progressive and takes obscene speaking fees from Goldman Sachs. Bernie's expensive progressive ideas will never make it in the real world. Etc. Etc. The Democrat debate...

When Gov. Rick Perry began rising in the polls, Mitt Romney was ready with a potent debate-night assault: under Mr. Perry, illegal immigrants in Texas received a $100,000 tuition break. As Newt Gingrich surged, the Romney campaign dispatched colleagues of Mr. Gingrich, a former House speaker, to ridicule him as “narcissistic” and “erratic” in conference calls that required a sardonic pass code: “Newt Gingrich is an unreliable leader.” And with Rick Santorum persisting as a threat as 10 states prepare to vote on Tuesday, Mr. Romney unleashed an ad in Ohio on Thursday mocking him as an unprincipled flip-flopper. The...

Dear Publisher and Editorial Page Editor: We write to you about what we regard as an existential threat to the integrity of the American political process... Over recent decades numerous voices have been raised about the dangers of massive amounts of money spent in the service of negative or false advertising, much has also been said about the threat that this might pose to voters’ right to accurate information about issues and candidates as well as to the civil discourse so essential to democracy... Governor Romney’s negative attack mentality, unfortunately, is a reflection of his own persona...As you are also...

Has Andrea Mitchell appointed herself hall monitor of the 2012 elections? On her MSNBC show today, Mitchell asked Mitt Romney whether he had "an apology to make to the voters" for the negative ads against Newt Gingrich being run by Romney-friendly Super PACs. For good measure, Mitchell scolded: "is that the kind of campaign you want to run: a negative campaign?" View the video here.

Senator Obama, this is truly a good day for America. Too often the achievements of our opponents go unnoticed. So I wanted to stop and say, congratulations. How perfect that your nomination would come on this historic day. Tomorrow, we'll be back at it. But tonight Senator, job well done. I'm John McCain and I approved this message. “100 percent of John McCain’s ads have been attack ads.” – Barack Obama This point is relatively petty, and quite frankly, it isn’t shocking that Obama would say something untrue. But to suggest that McCain’s advertising has been generally negative is probably...

With the news that the McCain campaign is launching a full assault on Obama's associates, preparedness, and judgment in a TV ad campaign to start Wednesday -- as detailed in this morning's Washington Post -- the Obama campaign is planning a pre-emptive assault on the TV airwaves to start Monday. Gov. Sarah Palin got the ball rolling this morning, going after Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., for his association with Professor William Ayers, a former member of the radical group the Weather Underground, saying Obama "is someone who sees America it seems as being so imperfect, imperfect enough that he’s palling...

If you're not a Minnesota, you probably haven't seen the blizzard of TV commercials emanating from Norm Coleman's and Al Franken's campaigns for the US Senate. Trust me, these ads are bare-knuckled. The first one is an attack ad by Coleman. The second is a rebuttal ad by Al Franken. And the third is a rebuttal by Coleman to Franken's rebuttal. Watch them in the exact order below... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJUxtfSdaX0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hZxxEKmJaY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nETYU-znTA

Barack Obama has aired substantially more negative TV ads than John McCain following the political conventions, a study released yesterday found. The University of Wisconsin analysis showed that 77 percent of Obama's ads that ran from Sept. 6-13 were negative - nearly all of the critical spots portraying McCain as a clone of President Bush. By comparison, 56 percent of McCain's ads were considered negative for attacking Obama. The most frequently aired Obama ad is called "Same" - a 30-second spot that shows five different shots of McCain with Bush. McCain's most frequently shown ad is "Original Mavericks," portraying the...

Barack Obama had a rough night in Texas and Ohio, and some are even taking a contentious press conference he recently endured as a sign the MSM might be turning on him. But the junior senator from Illinois can still count on one MSMer in his corner: Robin Roberts. A few weeks ago, as I noted here, the GMA co-anchor conducted a softball session for the ages with Obama. Today, Hillary Clinton made the rounds of all the morning network news shows. The toughest questioning by far came from Roberts, in this exchange. ROBIN ROBERTS: What do you think the...

The grainy black-and-white images appear on television, while ominous music plays in the background. It's another in a blizzard of negative political ads and before you consciously know it, the message takes hold of your brain. You may not want it to, but it works just about instantly. In fact, the ad's effects on the brain "are actually shocking," says UCLA psychiatry professor Dr. Marco Iacoboni. Iacoboni's brain imaging research from the 2004 presidential campaign revealed that viewers lost empathy for their own candidate once he was attacked. Scientists around the country are logging the emotional and physical effects of...

Every two years, The Stiletto hears the same lament: This year, candidates have hit a new low in negative campaigning. This election is no exception. "Both political parties are functioning in the 2006 House races as factories for attack ads, but the National Republican Campaign Committee's work stands out this year for the sheer volume of assaults on the personal character of Democratic House challengers," claims a report issued by the Annenberg Political Fact Check, a project of media and public policy think tank The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The report continues: The ads being...

Minnesota's DFL Party shelled out at least $800,000 in independent spending for November's state House elections, with almost half of it going toward negative ads and mailings against Republicans, who spent about $10,000, a report says. The election produced a loss of 13 seats for Republicans in the GOP-controlled House, and the conventional wisdom had it that a stalled legislative session earlier this year and the failure to finance key building programs for some districts soured voters on many House Republicans. Fueling some of that discontent was the money spent by political parties and independent groups, as detailed in the...

KERRY'S GLASS HOUSEKerry Was For Negative Ads Before He Was Against Them___________________________________"'Americans need a real conversation over our future,' Kerry said in a speech at a school in Spring Green, Wisconsin. 'What they don't need is all these trumped up advertisements, they just make people curl up and walk away,' added the Massachusetts senator. 'I'm calling them "misleadisments,"' Kerry said of the adverts. 'It's all scare tactics…'" ("Bush Sharpens Jabs Against Kerry Ahead Of Debates," Agence France Presse, 9/28/04)KERRY'S COMMENTS NEWS TO KERRY CAMPAIGNKerry-Edwards 2004, "Doesn't Get It," 30 Seconds, Sept. 27, 2004ü      "There he goes again. George Bush said...

One change voters may have noticed in this year's political campaigns shows up in commercials paid for by candidates. Toward the end of a TV or radio spot, the candidate comes on to identify himself and say, "I approved this message." That development is one of the intended results of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill of 2002. The "stand by your ad" provision makes these declarations mandatory. The idea was to discourage nasty attack ads by forcing candidates to personally endorse everything said on their behalf, making them more accountable for the messages put out by their campaigns and improving...

Live Convention Video, 7 - 11 p.m. ET• Sen. John F. Kerry• Max Cleland• Kerry's daughters, Alexandra and Vanessa Kerry• former Green Beret Jim Rassman• Madeleine Albright• Sen. Joe Biden (Del.)• Wesley Clark• Rep. James Clyburn (S.C.)• Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.)• Rep. Ed Markey (Mass.)• Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald (Calif.)• Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D.C.)• House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.)• Rep. Louise Slaughter (N.Y.)• John Sweeney, President of AFL-CIO• Gov. Mark Warner (Va.)

<p>When Dick Gephardt and Howard Dean eviscerated one another in Iowa with ferociously negative ads, John Kerry proved to be the beneficiary, cleverly exploiting the free ride that began on Iowa's wintry caucus night all the way to presumptive-nominee status. As this newspaper has noted, Mr. Kerry also benefited greatly from the fact that Messrs. Dean and Gephardt had foolishly promised to eliminate all of the tax cuts enacted under President Bush, including the substantial tax relief given to middle-class families. For his part, Mr. Kerry pledged only to repeal the tax cuts for those earning more than $200,000. With the Democratic presidential candidates having collectively spent more than $190 million through Super Tuesday on March 2, much of it blistering President Bush, Mr. Kerry emerged in fine shape, leading the incumbent in several polls.</p>

<p>March 27, 2004 -- John Kerry - more than any other Democrat - attacked President Bush in TV ads during the presidential primary season, a new nonpartisan study found.</p> <p>The survey of television advertising found that 78 percent of Kerry's primary commercials - and all of his general-election ads so far - were critical of Bush.</p>

The moment of political victory or defeat most often passes unnoticed by journalists and the insiders of the respective political campaigns. It is only in the retrospective of history that it becomes clear, and, even then, it is often distorted by the myopia of historians. But March 2004 gives every sign of going down in history as the crucial month of the presidential campaign. It will, very possibly, be recorded as the month in which Sen. John Kerry lost the election. Fresh from his successes in the Democratic primaries and the Super Tuesday concession of North Carolina Sen. John Edwards,...