Not only are the GOP gloves off but the skin is off:
Republican charges of a San Francisco “homosexual agenda” and allegations that a liberal “San Francisco majority” in Congress would endanger the nation have emerged as themes in the final two weeks of the Nov. 7 midterm election campaign.
Can anybody of any political party call this anything other than what it is: a campaign that has now boiled down to demonization, division and hate? MORE:
The latest salvos are variations on a constant GOP refrain this year, tied to the prospect that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a “San Francisco liberal,” would become speaker if Democrats make at least a 15-seat gain in the midterm elections.
“You know, they use me all over the country, my radical homosexual agenda,” said Pelosi, in San Francisco Friday before heading to campaign stops in Colorado and New Mexico.
“I’ve never seen a situation where a national party has run against a particular part of the country. It makes me wonder what the Republicans in San Francisco think about the assault that they are making on our city. But it doesn’t bother me,” she said.
A 60-second radio ad by Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind., who is locked in a tight race with the Democratic candidate, county Sheriff Brad Ellsworth, is the latest attack tied to the anti-Pelosi theme. The ad points out that an Ellsworth victory would help make Pelosi speaker and links the candidate and Pelosi to Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the openly gay congressman from Boston.
“Pelosi will then put in motion her radical plan to advance the homosexual agenda, led by Barney Frank, reprimanded by the House after paying for sex with a man who ran a gay brothel out of Congressman Frank’s home,” says the narrator.
That certainly unifies some of the campaign theme strands. Note that the closer we get to Election Day the more harsh the attacks have become. It’s part of a pattern of increasingly meaner ads — and there’s a little over two weeks to go. So imagine what will come next. AND:
“Go ahead, vote for Brad Ellsworth. Make Nancy Pelosi’s day,” the ad concludes.
“I don’t know what it is,” Pelosi spokeswoman Jennifer Crider said of the “homosexual agenda” referred to in the ad. “But Barney Frank is the ranking member of the Financial Services Committee, so perhaps Hostettler is talking about securities and exchange law.”
Indeed. And there is a larger question posed to Americans on Election Day. It’s whether by their votes this year people truly want to see the politics of setting groups off against groups and demonizing other Americans be rewarded at the polls.
There are many Republicans who don’t like what they’re seeing in politic ads that are lowering the bar to where said bar is buried deep in the mud.
NEITHER party is sweet-smelling when it comes to campaign ads and that has been a longtime historical fact.
But in Campaign 2006, one smells like a wet dog and the other like a big skunk with its tail up, spraying everyone within distance.
Which would Americans rather be with in a room?
As many newspaper stories (and our posts here) indicate, the reason why negative ads continue is that they WORK. If the Campaign 2006 GOP ads that are sinking to new lows work, then just project in your mind what politics will be like in 2008 and beyond in this new century.
But (just) perhaps on Nov. 7, 2006 there will be a vote result that’ll cause some rethinking on the part of the political hacks pros who are turning politics into a fuggeddaboutdit endeavor for thoughtful, high-quality people in both parties. Perhaps…..
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.