Free Republic

Part of the Donald Trump appeal is that he is a great businessman, and he certainly has taken his dad's business and grown it to big heights. But Trump is less of a business manager, and more of a marketing genius-a PT Barnum. He knows what to say and do to promote. It's why he is leading in the polls, and why he gets all the free airtime from the media. His record as a COO/Manager, etc. is uneven. He has built businesses and he has destroyed them, as witnessed by his four bankruptcies. The Donald will correctly say he...

As Lyndon Johnson told it -- or allowed it to be told in his name -- this Goldwater guy, if given half a chance, would blow up the world. In which case, why shouldn't the voters back in '64 not play it safe and keep LBJ in the White House? Memories of the infamous Johnson television spot, with its daisy-leaf-plucking-about-to-be-incinerated-by-bad-Barry, cuddly, little girl, cause some of us old-timers to reach for the Maalox. (Small wonder that Barry would later say, talking of Lyndon, "Don't get me started on that SOB.") The debasement of presidential discourse wasn't the only public offense...

I have already gone on record saying that the Romney campaign has not been mean and tough enough. The Obama crowd, which knows it is important to define an opposing candidate in a negative light before the candidate really gets to introduce himself to the public, has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at both Romney and Paul Ryan to accomplish that goal. There is now some evidence that the Romney camp and its supporters are getting more aggressive in their efforts to define President Obama. But while they have not reached the butt-kicking Lee Atwater take-no-prisoners effort of years...

Vice President Joe Biden played the race card this week when he drawled Southern-style to a racially mixed audience that if Mitt Romney takes the White House, he'll "unchain Wall Street. They're going to put y'all back in chains." Last week, a super PAC run by a former aide to President Obama released an ad in which a former steelworker all but fingered Romney for causing his 55-year-old wife's cancer death in 2006 because Bain Capital shuttered the plant where he worked in 2001. The week before, White House aides stood back as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, without providing...

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer advises presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to counter Obama's negative campaign with a negative campaign of his own. "Negative campaigns can work, and we're getting a taste of it right now. I think Romney's strategy should be to embrace that negativity. Just go for it and point out -- go back to it and point out how it's a sign of scurrilousness and hypocrisy," Krauthammer said on FOX News' "O'Reilly Factor." "Look at the mean that Democrats have put out from top to bottom. Republicans, Romney, the war on women, a concocted idea. War on...

We hear all this “ain’t it awful” talk about how people hate negative campaign ads. They ought to be banned, some people say. I disagree, so together let’s explore why. First thing to know is that while negative campaigning carries risk, it usually works. It turns underdogs into winners. But it must be done right or it will backfire. There are two types of negative campaign media. First are the nasty attack ads using emotional content not factually based, or crammed with half-truths. The other type uses accurate negative content that is based on facts. As a voter, you are...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama may joke about preparing for debates by riding bumper cars, but the 2008 campaign has been fairly civil so far -- and that's not necessarily good for U.S. voters. Conventional wisdom, and some research, has held that negative campaigning turns off voters and prompts them to stay away from the voting booth, but recent scholarship is reversing that notion, researchers say. "Democracy itself requires negativity," said John Geer, a Vanderbilt University professor who studies negative political campaigning. "We want the right to be critical of those in power." With the country highly...

Up to now it's just been a war of words, but now Governor Glendening is upping the ante in his feud with Comptroller William Donald Schaefer. Glendening is giving Secretary of State John Willis $25,000 in campaign money he doesn't need anymore to use for radio ads in his uphill battle to unseat Shaefer. The ads will run in the Washington area where Schaefer isn't as popular as he is around Baltimore. Glendening says he's doing it because of what he calls Schaefer's "lack of respect" for the citizens of Maryland. Schaefer's opponents say he has made derogatory remarks about...