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 .
Halloween has come early this year: Republicans have forgotten how to run without scare tactics.
You would think that President Bush, knowing the needs of the oil companies, would have waged a war of words to push the domestic drilling. Maybe he thought that Iraq oil would have become available to increase the world supply.
I think the dominant issue will be the cost of energy. The party that comes up with a clear message about a solution will win.
I happen to be a drilling consultant in the Oil Industry. It’s something that is truly a fact of life. You are correct. There is no over night solution.
We are drilling heavily now, and have been since 2003. You still have not seen the result of all that activity. It will still take several more years for it to even effect the price by a few percentage points. In the World scheme of things, it is only a drop in the barrel.
“I would have paid good money to watch Duncan Hunter “debate” Obama.”
Debate...verbally destroy....whichever.
“Richard Viguerie is an ass. As usual. With Republican “friends” such as Viguerie, who needs enemies?”
Well, you can bash him, but can you refute the points he makes?
I’ve said some of the same things here and get bashed by the rabid McCainiacs. That sure makes me want to support him/S
Interesting. You've been a member since 2005 but the site says you've had NO posts until last week. You've amassed 50 this week, most bashing McCain and "moderate" Republicans.
Maybe you're legit. Or maybe you're a troll trying to seed discontent. In either event, your position is defeatist and boring.
“who habitually paints decent public servants and fellow conservatives as feckless sell-outs and betrayers. “
He’d be right about 99% of the time.
I’m surprised this hasn’t been ModYanked yet.
Tell that to all the victims of Muslim attacks. I’m sure they feel differently.
“NO posts until last week. You’ve amassed 50 this week, most bashing McCain and “moderate” Republicans.”
Good for him, we all should be bashing Mccain and moderate Republicans. This is a conservative site not a squisshy moderate site. Maybe you’re the one out of step.
Yeah I’ve been kinda wondering when this became a pro McQueeg site.
Ah, you’re a moderate, LOL.
Baloney. Obama is a leftwing with marxist friends and ideals no matter WHO runs against him.
“Incumbents running for re-election this year are screwed.
A “perfect storm” of $5. gas and heating oil, higher food prices and unemployment will be peaking just in time for November. People are, and will be, angry - very angry.”
That would be wonderful if we dumped the 230 Democrat incumbents in the House and the 15 Senate Democrats up for re-election.
They are to blame for most of this mess after all.
McCain is trying to run as a democrat, of course he has nothing.
Viguerie is nailing nothing.
It’s not fearmongering but simply telling it like it is: Obama is unfit and far too leftwing to be President. Obama is wrong on Judges, taxes, spending, Iraq, Hamas, Iran, socialized healthcare, abortion, the UN - everything!
The man is the worst nominee the Democrats have put up in 40 years. He will be worse than Carter and is certainly worse than McCain would be by a long shot.
The fact that the media is in the tank for Obama and that Obama is as capable as CLinton was of a dishonest campaign only underscores the need further to tell the truth about Obama.
Its painful to see Viguerie bashing Republicans for doing things Viguerie used to do to an even greater extent. Another victim of BDS.
http://no-bama.blogspot.com/ - co-bloggers wanted!
“The Republicans have forgotten that,”
Not true. Check these conservatives out - they are running this year ...
Pearce in New Mexico:
http://peopleforpearce.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
Shaffer in Colorado:
http://www.bobschafferforsenate.com/
Sununu in New Hampshire:
http://www.teamsununu.org/
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