aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Friday, October 27, 2006
Negative ad round-up
Positive ads come off as fluff. Negative ads give people a reason to vote a certain way… Are Democrats afraid to go negative? Do the people making the ads realize how unpopular the Republican Party is right now? Here in Illinois, we are about to reelect a corrupt Governor. The only thing he has going for him is that he is not a Republican. In this environment, negative ads against Republicans will work. What are we waiting for?
People are already voting. The last-second blitzes should be going on now.
I just don’t like negative ads. And it seems to me Dems don’t need them this time around. Political wisdom holds that they work. WaPo has a good round-up of this year’s doozies:
Rep. Ron Kind pays for sex!
Well, that’s what the Republican challenger for his Wisconsin congressional seat, Paul R. Nelson, claims in new ads, the ones with “XXX” stamped across Kind’s face.
It turns out that Kind—along with more than 200 of his fellow hedonists in the House—opposed an unsuccessful effort to stop the National Institutes of Health from pursuing peer-reviewed sex studies. According to Nelson’s ads, the Democrat also wants to “let illegal aliens burn the American flag” and “allow convicted child molesters to enter this country.”
To Nelson, that doesn’t even qualify as negative campaigning.
“Negative campaigning is vicious personal attacks,” he said in an interview. “This isn’t personal at all.” […]
The National Republican Campaign Committee is spending more than 90 percent of its advertising budget on negative ads, according to GOP operatives, and the rest of the party seems to be following suit. A few examples of the “character issues” taking center stage two weeks before Election Day:
· In New York, the NRCC ran an ad accusing Democratic House candidate Michael A. Arcuri, a district attorney, of using taxpayer dollars for phone sex. “Hi, sexy,” a dancing woman purrs. “You’ve reached the live, one-on-one fantasy line.” It turns out that one of Arcuri’s aides had tried to call the state Division of Criminal Justice, which had a number that was almost identical to that of a porn line. The misdial cost taxpayers $1.25.
· In Ohio, GOP gubernatorial candidate J. Kenneth Blackwell, trailing by more than 20 points in polls, has accused front-running Democratic Rep. Ted Strickland of protecting a former aide who was convicted in 1994 on a misdemeanor indecency charge. Blackwell’s campaign is also warning voters through suggestive “push polls” that Strickland failed to support a resolution condemning sex between adults and children. Strickland, a psychiatrist, objected to a line suggesting that sexually abused children cannot have healthy relationships when they grow up.
· The Republican Party of Wisconsin distributed a mailing linking Democratic House candidate Steve Kagen to a convicted serial killer and child rapist. The supposed connection: The “bloodthirsty” attorney for the killer had also done legal work for Kagen.
· In two dozen congressional districts, a political action committee supported by a white Indianapolis businessman, J. Patrick Rooney, is running ads saying Democrats want to abort black babies. A voice says, “If you make a little mistake with one of your hos, you’ll want to dispose of that problem tout de suite, no questions asked.”
· In the most controversial recent ad, the Republican National Committee slammed Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.) for attending a Playboy-sponsored Super Bowl party. In the ad, a scantily clad white actress winks as she reminisces about good times with Ford, who is black. That ad has been pulled, but the RNC has a new one saying Ford “wants to give the abortion pill to schoolchildren.” […]
The “pays for sex” ad against Kind in Wisconsin—along with a similar one aired against Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.)—may be the most extreme. It says Kind spent tax dollars to study “the sex lives of Vietnamese prostitutes” and “the masturbation habits of old men” and “to pay teenage girls to watch pornographic movies with probes connected to their genitalia.” Cue the punch line: “Ron Kind pays for sex, but not for soldiers.” The Wisconsin Republican Party denounced the ad, and several TV stations refused to air it, but that only got it more attention. It is the centerpiece of Nelson’s Web site: “This ad is so powerful, a sitting U.S. Congressman threatened TV stations with legal action if they dared to play it.”
The anti-Sherrod Brown ad smearing Al Franken with a fake quote and a doctored photo didn’t make the list. You’ve got to wonder, how is it they can call Michael J. Fox’s ads ”really shameless?”
