A political campaign for political office is by nature a fourm for attack
politics. How else are you going to point out the other guys failings.

Good question. Here's the answer.
In clean politics, your opponent isn't evil.
He's merely misguided. His policies aren't dedicated on destroying the United
States, making us a vassal of France, or handing the keys to the White House to
Osama bin Ladin.....they're just not a effective as the policies you are going
to implement in their stead.

Members of the opposing political party aren't "traitors and socialists" or
"war mongers and fascists", they're fellow Americans with a different, but
legitimate point of view.

It's OK to point out the deficiencies in the
opponent's record. It's wrong when you assassinate character in the process.

Good example (of dirty politics) is a radio ad running here recently. It's an
anti-Bush ad. In this ad,
they point out how George Bush campaigned for governor in Texas by stating he
was in favor of a Patients Bill of Rights. When he took office, one of the
first pieces of legislation he was asked to approve was a newly passed
Patients' Bill of Rights, and he promptly vetoed it. When the legislature got
together enough votes to override his veto, he then went around taking personal
credit for the passage of the bill! While publicly crowing about how he had
fulfilled his promise to create a Patient's Bill of Rights, he ordered the AG
to go to the Supreme Court to see if it could be overturned. Assuming the facts
they outline are true, the dirty little jab in this radio ad is an
out-of-context quote by Bush at the very end, "That's the kind of leadership
style I bring to Washington."

I think the ad is sponsored by Americans for Family Values, or some such group,
but we all know it's really the Democrats in disguise- just like Viet Nam Vets
against Kerry is a Republican group.

And this is where Bush wins. Kerry has spent so many years in the US Senate
and has done a damn thing but run his mouth.


Senators are generally unelectable.
After long careers in the Senate, they have too long a voting record and even
though times and conditions change from decade to decade, it's so elementary to
pick out different positions a Senator adopts during his service and say, "See!
He has a character flaw! In 1984, he voted against abortion rights, and in 1999
he voted for a woman's right to choose! He changes his mind (over 15 years)! We
can't trust this guy to run anything except his mouth!"

This Senator might have a chance. I think a lot of conservatives would be
surprised to discover that outside of the Limbaugh and Hannity radio shows,
somewhere around half the country thinks militant conservatives are FOS. It's
been funny (sort of) watching this current group of clowns who lost the popular
vote govern as if they had a landslide mandate.