}

Friday, October 10, 2008

100% negative—and wrong

We all know that John McCain is becoming increasingly desperate and negative, turning the Palin-McCain campaign in one long, ugly smear against Barack Obama. Now we have a way to measure just how negative John McCain has become.

The Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin reported that in the week of Sept. 28 to Oct 4, the Palin-McCain campaign ran 100% negative ads. During the same time, the Obama campaign ran 34% negative ads, and most of them would have been attacking Palin-McCain lies and smears.

The Palin-McCain campaign has continued to try and smear Barack by insinuating that he’s a terrorist. They don’t actually say that, of course, but by continually bringing up the non-existent link with Bill Ayers, they’re trying to smear Barack with guilt by association. Normal, rational people know that Barack was eight years old when Ayers was a radical, and they know that the extent of the link was that they served on an education reform group’s board at the same time and live in the same area of Chicago. But Palin-McCain aren’t talking to normal, rational people, but to those who are afraid of a black man with a funny name. This is classic dog-whistle politics: They don’t expect normal, rational people to buy their lies and smears, they’re really trying to motivate racist voters and those who are easily led.

Guilt by association, huh? Well, then, what about Palin’s extensive links to the Anti-American secessionists in Alaska? She denies the links, of course, but they’re far stronger than Barack’s are to Bill Ayers. Or what about McCain’s links to Nazi collaborator and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America? He directly supported them, and Reagan’s illegal support for the Contras, but as an 8 year old Barack clearly didn’t support Ayers. If Palin-McCain want to play this game, then they have to accept that we’ll look at their real links to unsavoury characters, too.

McCain is running 100% negative ads, he and his dangerous and absurd running mate are repeating lies and smears endlessly, and they offer nothing new, just four more years of Bush-Cheney (only more so). They’re not just 100% negative, they’re 100% wrong for America.

5 comments:

Ann and Michael said...

Have you seen this piece from Keith Olbermann's show about how Palin and McCain are actively inciting hate at their rallies? What are they hoping for?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXs_u4f2ZD8

Along the same sinister lines Bill Moyers did a podcast about 4 weeks ago about right wing radio actively inciting violence- very frightening, and parallels to 1930s Germany are in evidence.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/rss/redir/http://www-tc.pbs.org/moyers/rss/media/BMJ-1222.mp3

-Ann

Arthur Schenck said...

I subscribe to the podcast versions of both Bill Moyers and Keith Olbermann's Countdown (and eventually I'll put the links on my blog).

I see the same parallels you do, and I fear that if Obama doesn't win, this will be the last free election in America. I suppose that's a post in itself. For now, suffice it to say that through his campaign McCain has made me despise him about as much as I despise Bush-Cheney, and I never would've guessed that was possible.

Anonymous said...

For more of this racist race-baiting check out stopdogwhistleracism.com.

Roger Owen Green said...

Well, as you know, I wrote on this today. Thanks for the correction, BTW. http://rogerowengreen.blogspot.com/2008/10/scary-thought.html

Arthur Schenck said...

Ludovic Blain Thanks for the link. I did check it out. The more exposure dogwhistle politics gets, the better.

Roger: No worries—I rely on you to correct me, too!