Salon: When Republicans attack

[kskiska]

The Swift boat ads have been exposed by the press as blatantly false, but that hasn't stopped the Bush machine from pushing them. Has Kerry figured out how to fight back against the lies and the lying liars who tell them?

(snip)

Like many other Democrats, McMahon is incredulous that -- in light of Bush's record -- Vietnam service is even an issue in the campaign. "It seems to me that the president has an awful lot of explaining to do, particularly because he can't produce a single person, he can't remember where he lived, he can't remember who he hug out with, the folks he went drinking with, the bars he hung out in, and we're expected to take seriously their allegations about how many bullets were flying one day in Vietnam?"

Wayne Slater isn't surprised at all. Slater, the veteran Dallas Morning News reporter who coauthored "Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential," said Tuesday that the Swift Boat Veterans attack was entirely predictable. Slater has watched Karl Rove work for nearly two decades, and he said the "mark of Rove" in a campaign is always the same: Aim nasty attacks right at your opponent's strength, but keep your own fingerprints off them.

(snip)

If the Rove tactic is so successful, why haven't the Democrats emulated it? Why not round up men who served -- actually served -- in the Texas Air National Guard and have them appear in an ad questioning Bush's service? "It's a good idea," said MoveOn's Eli Pariser, and he actually sounded surprised by it. But then he stopped himself. "I think we're mostly going to focus on issue stuff, on Iraq, on the big places where Bush has failed."

Why not fight fire with fire? Why not push the "deserter" issue? Why not work harder to find witnesses who can talk about Bush's pre-sobriety past? "That's never been our approach," Pariser said. "We've been fighting fire with water, which is the truth to these allegations."

more…
http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/08/25/kerry/index.html

[Stuckinthebush]

1. The weakness and the beauty of Democrats

is that we reject such nasty methods of campaigning (for the most part). That says a great deal about our moral center, yet it is surely a weakness in the dirty game of politics.