Presidential Campaign Gets Nasty

October 20, 2004

The excitement is building as we enter the home stretch of this presidential election. And what a race it's been. For political watchers like me, it's been quite an exhilarating ride. However, as much as the Kerry campaign would like to dismiss the reality, this has been George W. Bush running against George W. Bush. From the beginning, the Kerry support has been thin. The anti-Bush sentiment has driven the Democrats. Although, negative campaigns run high with passion, they very rarely win elections. Hopefully, I won't have to eat my words in next week's column but it's true.

 

As much as the Right despised Clinton, they could not translate that into a victory in 1996. Ditto for 1984. The Left hated Ronald Reagan but were none too thrilled with Walter Mondale. The result was Reagan running away with 98 percent of the electoral vote.

 

So, what's a party to do when they fail to ignite enough excitement for their candidate to win? They go dirty. The reports of Democrats attacking Republican campaign headquarters have surfaced in the news in recent weeks. Campaign computers were stolen from the headquarters in Seattle. Union thugs ransacked the Bush-Cheney headquarters in Orlando. Shots were fired at the Republican headquarters in Knoxville and Huntington, West Virginia. The stories of destruction and intimidation go on and on.

 

Right here in our area, the NAACP has resorted to registering inmates to vote. The Democrats also distributed a despicable flier in Lauderdale County in which Bush's face was superimposed on the body of a Special Olympics athlete with the caption, “Voting for Bush is Like Running in the Special Olympics. Even If You Win, You're Still Retarded.” Both of these stories we broke on our radio show. Only the latter got minimal attention by the elite press.

 

Then there's the other story we broke about State Senator Charlotte Burk using her senate office to distribute campaign material.  This is a Class C misdemeanor yet no one seemed to care. Just imagine if the roles were reversed. What if the Bush campaign had been up to such shenanigans? The press would have a field day.

 

Some quarters of the Democratic Party are even whining that convicted felons who raped, robbed and murdered are somehow “disenfranchised” citizens because they're not allowed to vote. The practice, they argue, is discriminatory. That's right. Whenever things aren't going your way, you can always play the race card. That card has become so worn and dog-eared from being played so many times in recent years that, hopefully, it's lost much of its effectiveness. That doesn't stop the race-baiters from trying it again.

 

This election is, quite simply, a referendum on George W. Bush. Let's not pretend otherwise. The hard-core Democrats are still hacked off about the 2000 election despite numerous recounts that continued to come out in Bush's favor and an independent analysis of the voting by the New York Times and the Washington Post that also concluded Bush won. Instead of moving on, they unleash anti-American zealots like Michael Moore on the public with propaganda films designed to sway the electorate. Fortunately, a rebuttal has been produced called FahrenHYPE 9/11. This film features former New York mayor Ed Koch, Clinton advisor Dick Morris and Hollywood liberal Ron Silver. I suggest you go to our website at PhilValentine.com to learn more about this picture. Everyone, regardless of his/her political views, should see this before entering the polling booth.