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 .
Now you’re talking.
Lay off McCain.
Let’s support some actual conservatives with our time and money.
And McCain couldn’t even stand tall for Hagee.
Imply McCain is a conservative? Huh?! I didn't try to imply any such thing. Get out of the fever swamp. My remarks had zip-zero-nada to do with McCain and you embarrass yourself with your snap assumptions and smug research tips. My remarks were about Viguerie, a habitual crank who irrationally attacks fellow conservatives. Sound familiar?
Viguerie's history discredits Viguerie well enough. And my intent was not to "prove him wrong" (in fact, I pointedly noted that he made some sense). It was to shine a light on Viguerie. To place his pessimistic remarks in the overall context of his undeniable history of being a whining Chicken Little crank who's made a career out of pompously carping at his supposed fellow conservatives. So what if he happens to be right in this or that particular assessment? One can say the same of those who wear old newspapers and rant and rave on street corners.
Weak and cowardly approach to discussing the issue at hand.
So says he from a behind an anonymous nickname on a computer in a different state.
If the site says I have had no posts until last week the site is wrong. I average about twenty posts per week.
I am a conservative...I am not some liberal planting lies...
Am not the least bit interested in your opinions of those who aren't running like Casey, Specter, etc. I used to send $ to conservatives from other areas that I couldn't vote for, but there's not a single one who is still in Congress.
I note that you have taken no notice of Murphy's recent ethics problems which is when he became a lot less conservative and a lot more interested in voting in tandem with Murtha. I know...everybody does it. In fact, that's one of the reasons why Traficant is sitting behind bars.
Your problem is that you're a GOOD Republican. I'm not. I'm a GOOD conservative. I never thought I would live long enough to see the Republicans control the WH and both Houses of Congress. Now, I wish I hadn't.
I made it clear enough that your statement that Tim Murphy is as bad as Murtha is factually false. You make non-supported claims with out facts and if I was going to state otherwise, I owed it to you to give the data, hence the long post.
Recalibrate your understanding of what is going on and support and vote accordingly. Your claim that moderate-to-conservative Republicans are no better than liberal Democrats is false.
Conservatives in many races need your support, and even the not-too-conservative Republicans deserve your vote over the Democrats.
And you should Vote for McCain. #1 reason: Obama.
http://no-bama.blogspot.com/
“Fear mongering?”
WarToad - Member since April, 2008.
GTFO, disruptor. Unlike you, I remember 9/11, I have friends in harm’s way, and I’ve watched the jihadist facists carefully during the last 7.5 years. “Fear mongering” about a real, present, and deadly danger to my country? No, it is called being truthful. You’re repeating the swill of the socialists/marxists and other anti-american forces in the Left. Just saying that proves you’re a disruptor, chief.
If you think that responding to the terrorists is “fear mongering”, well, then you’re either seriously ill (and if so, I hope you recover) or you’re a dupe and an enemy.
SHOW me where I said that.
"Your claim that moderate-to-conservative Republicans are no better than liberal Democrats is false."
SHOW me where I said that.
YOU SAID you would tell me somebody to VOTE for. I'm still waiting. I don't need all the statistics that you've pulled up because unfortunately for you, I KNOW those and don't need you to repeat them.
I have been voting for a long time, longer than you is my guess. I have NEVER voted for liberal Democrats and about 10 yrs. ago, I stopped voting for moderate-to-liberal Republicans because I am NOT a good Republican anymore. I ONLY VOTE FOR CONSERVATIVES and they don't vote like the unions or Murtha want them to vote in order to avoid ethics charges.
I REPEAT: "Got anybody for me to vote for?" If not, our conversation is over.
We have nothing to offer but fear itself is drawing dead.
good line...
I have already disproven your statement “Tim Murphy, hardly a conservative, whose votes on most issues mirror his buddy, John Murtha’s” completely showing a 67% ACU versus 20% ACU voting records.
” “Your claim that moderate-to-conservative Republicans are no better than liberal Democrats is false.”
SHOW me where I said that. “ You claimed they were no more deserving of your vote and vote like liberals. Both are wrong.
I showed you MANY conservatives are running for Congress and need your support if you feel disinclined to support your local congress-critter, as there is more to political action than voting.
I think you should join me in voting for McCain, for the Judges and *against* Obama, and work to defeat RINOs in *primaries* rather than use the general election to take it out on them, but your unwillingness to vote for Republicans who dont match your views 100% is your affair. I am under no illusion that politicians will do what I want 100% of the time, but I know which party is on my side most of the time. Enjoy your Obama presidency.
FAT CHANCE!
As I said, enjoy the Obama Presidency.
BTW hows that Casey guy working out for you?
FYI, the DemonRATs have had their hand in it:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2027939/posts
Correct StilettoRaksha, sorry about the inference that it was you I was referring to.
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