Election Mud-Slinging Needs To End At A Time Of Serious Economic Problems And Constitutional....

IBD Editorials ^ | February 27, 2012 | THOMAS SOWELL

[Kaslin]

The only good news for the Republicans coming out of the seemingly endless presidential candidate "debates" is that some Republican leaders are now belatedly thinking about how they can avoid a repetition of this debacle in future elections.

What could they possibly have been thinking about, in the first place, when they agreed to a format based on short sound bites for dealing with major complex issues, and with media journalists — 90% of them Democrats — picking the topics?

The conduct of the candidates made things worse. In a world with a record-breaking national debt and Iran moving toward creating nuclear weapons, they bickered over earmarks and condoms. I am against earmarks, but earmarks don't rank among the first hundred most serious problems facing this country.

Mud-slinging has replaced rational discussions of differences on serious issues — not only during the debates themselves, where the moderators sic the candidates on each other, but even more so in the massive television character-assassination ads in which Romney supporters seem to specialize.

Groups supporting Mitt Romney have turned character assassination almost into a science. You take something that most people, outside of politics, do not understand and twist it to sound terrible to those who are unaware of the facts.

Blanketing Florida with misleading ads attacking Newt Gingrich won that state for Romney, after Gingrich scored an upset victory in South Carolina.

The ads made a big deal out of charges that the former Speaker broke tax laws — charges that the Internal Revenue Service exonerated him of, after a long investigation.

[Kaslin]

Entire Title: Election Mud-Slinging Needs To End At A Time Of Serious Economic Problems And Constitutional Malfeasance

[achilles2000]

This is where Sowell and others like him show they are utterly naive. The left sees this as an opportunity for seizing more power. They don’t care about solving problems, the truth, the Constitution, or anything else - except increasing their power.

Sowell has consistently been right in his policy analyses, but he and many others fail to see that the left is no different from the Brown Shirts or the Bolsheviks; they are looking to seize power by any means available. The real issue is whether we are going to find the will to get beyond words to take effective action to stop them.

[BfloGuy]

Sowell has consistently been right in his policy analyses, but he and many others fail to see that the left is no different from the Brown Shirts or the Bolsheviks

You haven't read much Sowell, have you. Trust me, he sees that.

[elkfersupper]

Sowell senses insurgency on the horizon, and he is looking to derail it. I can’t blame him, but when the insurgency comes, I’m down with it.

[achilles2000]

I read a great deal of Sowell and think highly of him. The irrefutable point, however, is that this article is naive, and he is not the only academic on our side who lapses into this sort of thing.