Dirt Happens!
A little over three weeks to go in the 2008 presidential campaign and we have finally sighted mud! It’s been bound to happen, despite both sides promising to keep running their campaigns running on the up and up. It’s coming fast and furious and from both Republicans and Democrats. Everyone loathes it, the voters are turned off by it, but yet here we are watching it all like a head-on collision of two old-fashioned steam engines.
The first attack came a few days after the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin. The McCain camp, sensing a slip in their poll numbers, resorted to the old fear factor to appeal to undecided voters. Hey, why not? Fear has worked for the Bush administration for the last eight years; it should work here.
McCain allowed Palin to do his dirty work. Speaking in Florida (lipstick perfect and unsmeared), Palin revived the old Clinton campaign objection that one of Barack Obama’s political allies was a member of the domestic terrorist group The Weather Underground. She argued that Barack and the ally, Bill Ayres, now a college professor, “don’t see America the same way we do.” Later on, she was quoted in a newspaper article as saying that Obama’s association with his pastor, who espoused some decidedly un-American ideas from his pulpit, should be “talked about more.”
Okay, honey, first of all, the rest of us talked about and dealt with these issues when they were raised FIVE MONTHS AGO! Where the hell were you? Oh, that’s right; you were probably too busy running children to hockey practice and bringing home a moose for dinner to notice that the rest of America was having primaries. Obviously you missed the part where Obama denounced Ayres' political tactics from forty years ago, and he distanced himself from his longtime pastor when Reverend Wright got too hot to handle.
Obviously you don’t remember much about the 1960s. I know you were only four and Barack has explained that he was only eight years old at the time. Yet you want to hold him accountable for some radical group's agenda from forty years ago? This guilt by association tactic was discredited years ago. Ah, the good old days of McCarthyism; gone but not forgotten.
In case you forgot what the 1960s were like, allow me to give a very, very brief, grandly over-simplified history. Basically, it was determined by the number 30, as in age 30. Generally, if you were over 30, you favored the status quo, supported the war in South Vietnam, and enjoyed the affluence of post War World Two America. If you were under 30, you were most likely a radical, you were told not to trust anyone over 30, you supported civil rights, and all of us under that age were most likely standing on the grassy knoll when Kennedy was shot... I realize that this is an unfair generalization, but I think we can all agree that the 1960s were a very weird time.
Also, Ms. Palin, you raised these dead horses just days after accusing Joe Biden of performing a “pointing a finger, there you go again,” blame game. In the interest of fair and balanced, we should inquire how that ethics probe against you is going. That’s not so ancient history as say, the Keating Five, in which your man was involved and which you forced Obama to dredge up in self defense. And, while we’re nitpicking about radicals, what about that Alaska secessionist group with which your husband was involved? Many people might equate secession with treason, and that doesn’t look very good on the old vice presidential resume.
This is politics as usual, gang. Nobody likes to see mud slinging, but it rears its ugly head anyway. It’s as if it is an unwritten law in the world of politics: dirt happens because dirt works.
The first attack came a few days after the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin. The McCain camp, sensing a slip in their poll numbers, resorted to the old fear factor to appeal to undecided voters. Hey, why not? Fear has worked for the Bush administration for the last eight years; it should work here.
McCain allowed Palin to do his dirty work. Speaking in Florida (lipstick perfect and unsmeared), Palin revived the old Clinton campaign objection that one of Barack Obama’s political allies was a member of the domestic terrorist group The Weather Underground. She argued that Barack and the ally, Bill Ayres, now a college professor, “don’t see America the same way we do.” Later on, she was quoted in a newspaper article as saying that Obama’s association with his pastor, who espoused some decidedly un-American ideas from his pulpit, should be “talked about more.”
Okay, honey, first of all, the rest of us talked about and dealt with these issues when they were raised FIVE MONTHS AGO! Where the hell were you? Oh, that’s right; you were probably too busy running children to hockey practice and bringing home a moose for dinner to notice that the rest of America was having primaries. Obviously you missed the part where Obama denounced Ayres' political tactics from forty years ago, and he distanced himself from his longtime pastor when Reverend Wright got too hot to handle.
Obviously you don’t remember much about the 1960s. I know you were only four and Barack has explained that he was only eight years old at the time. Yet you want to hold him accountable for some radical group's agenda from forty years ago? This guilt by association tactic was discredited years ago. Ah, the good old days of McCarthyism; gone but not forgotten.
In case you forgot what the 1960s were like, allow me to give a very, very brief, grandly over-simplified history. Basically, it was determined by the number 30, as in age 30. Generally, if you were over 30, you favored the status quo, supported the war in South Vietnam, and enjoyed the affluence of post War World Two America. If you were under 30, you were most likely a radical, you were told not to trust anyone over 30, you supported civil rights, and all of us under that age were most likely standing on the grassy knoll when Kennedy was shot... I realize that this is an unfair generalization, but I think we can all agree that the 1960s were a very weird time.
Also, Ms. Palin, you raised these dead horses just days after accusing Joe Biden of performing a “pointing a finger, there you go again,” blame game. In the interest of fair and balanced, we should inquire how that ethics probe against you is going. That’s not so ancient history as say, the Keating Five, in which your man was involved and which you forced Obama to dredge up in self defense. And, while we’re nitpicking about radicals, what about that Alaska secessionist group with which your husband was involved? Many people might equate secession with treason, and that doesn’t look very good on the old vice presidential resume.
This is politics as usual, gang. Nobody likes to see mud slinging, but it rears its ugly head anyway. It’s as if it is an unwritten law in the world of politics: dirt happens because dirt works.
posted by todd gunther | 6:46 PM
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