You are going to need this.
Posted on 10/30/2008 8:41:13 AM PDT by steve-b
North Carolina knows from sad experience about negative election campaigns and misleading, untruthful advertising. In the 1950 campaign, opponents of the late UNC President Frank Porter Graham used a doctored photo of his wife with a black man to inject race into a Senate campaign and help defeat the revered educator. In 1990, Sen. Jesse Helms used the infamous "white hands" ad, blaming the failure of a white person to get a job on a minority and "a racial quota" to help defeat former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt.
When Helms retired in 2002 and Salisbury native Elizabeth Dole was elected to take his place, voters here breathed a sigh of relief. Surely Dole would not stoop to the racial appeals that marked too many N.C. elections and soured so many people on politics. It just wasn't her way. While she might be every bit as conservative as Helms, her style was not divisive. She did not demonize her opponents.
Until now. In a new TV ad that must have the late Sen. Helms smiling and cheering from the great beyond, the Dole campaign has attacked her opponent, Democratic state Sen. Kay Hagan of Greensboro, as "godless." Hagan attended a September fundraiser in Boston sponsored by dozens of people and co-hosted by two persons associated with a group called Godless Americans PAC. Dole's ad says Hagan took "godless" money. Hagan's campaign says she did not receive money from the PAC, though she did get money from one of the co-hosts. She has demanded Dole halt the ad.
Hagan's attendance at any fundraiser and acceptance of a contribution is a fair topic for comment. Yet Dole has resorted to the Big Lie technique, morphing a kernel of truth into a monumental fiction.
How so? The Dole campaign stepped across a broad line, portraying Hagan as not Christian and suggesting she does not believe in God. The Dole ad shows a picture of Hagan while a woman's voice, not Hagan's, intones, "There is no God."
This is indecent. It is the modern-day version of the "white hands" ad, a lie born of Dole's desperation in a race in which she has trailed for weeks. It is also a deliberate attempt by Dole's campaign not just to distort the truth, but to shatter Hagan's admirable record as an elder for more than a decade in Greensboro's First Presbyterian Church, as a Sunday School teacher and a volunteer in her church's fundraising campaigns, worship services and community service programs.
Political campaigns in this state are often hard-fought, with bitter, overwrought accusations that stretch the truth, embellish the facts and attempt to confuse voters. Hagan has hit Dole hard. Dole has hit Hagan hard. That is par for the course.
This ad is something else, an attack on a Christian woman's faith against all evidence to the contrary. It is wrong. It may well backfire on Dole.
It has no place in N.C. politics. Unless she admits this egregious, shameful mistake and acts appropriately, Elizabeth Dole has no place in N.C. politics, either.
Saw the add.
The only question would be “Hagan, did you or did you not go to the event?”
Since she has not stated that - then the add is true.
The ad is simply great!
The bleating from this Democrat newspaper only reinforces the suspicion that the ad is working, and working quite well. Dole needs to run this ad exclusively, and often, right up until election day.
Hope people cancel subscriptions to this rag. Dole must not back down on this.
Aw, not you again steve! Don’t you think you’d be more comfortable over at Huffpo?
And:
“the infamous “white hands” ad, blaming the failure of a white person to get a job on a minority and “a racial quota”
That did happen to me!
And she went to Boston to collect her bounty.
Most atheist Democrats go to Hollywood to line their campaign chests.
Those dumb editors got the headline wrong. It should read, "Charlotte Observer's Desperate Turn To Big Lie Reporting"...
I think there’s a market for a statewide conservative newspaper in NC. Because all we get is liberal trash in the Raleigh and Charlotte newspapers. McClatchy really blows this year.
Sorry Liberals - an upleasent truth is not a lie!
SHE SHOULD ONLY REPEAT AND NAIL IT !
So that the libs could understand as they have a problem of slow understanding many times!
exactly...it’s gotten to the point where it’s much easier now to vote straight ticket Republican because if the few good democrats aren’t aware yet that their party has been hijacked by godless lunatic NEA liberals, then they’re not fit to lead in the first place!
Typos schmypos.
Gee I wonder which candidate this rag has endorsed? </ Sarcasm>
You are going to need this.
Hagen is not a good democrat she voted to raise taxes in NC by 7 billion dollars
And that ad is great. Hagen is a typical liberal dem.
If Dole is such a great christian why is she bearing false witness?
And, by the way, the republican party has plenty of room for atheists. It is the democrats who ware stifling the right of Christians to worship and speak out in public. It is the democrats who use churches and preachers to LITERALLY pass the hat DURING the service for political friends (of radical, anti-religious democrats) of the preachers.
Dole’s ad accuses her of being atheist. That was clearly the intent.
Maybe Hagan IS a atheist! You don’t think there’s atheist in liberal Protestant churches. Is that Hagan yelling “there is no God” at the end?
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