Are There Groups Ready And Prepared To "Swiftboat" the GOP '08 Candidate

Cause if there aren't, we're gonna lose.

This will be the first election since 1952 that there won't be an incumbent Pres or Veep on either ticket. Thus, the candidates will be by and large introducing themselves on the national stage (with the possible exception of Hillary and McCain). They can either frame themselves for the public or they can be defined by the opposition.

Whomever we run - Hillary, Gore, Kerry, Warner, Feingold - they are going to have independent groups with hundreds of millions of dollars ready to smear them.

Do we have similar groups ready to define McCain, Allen, Huckabee, etc?

And don't give me that crap about how we're Democrats, so we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard.

Politics in this day and age is a contact sport and we have to be ready to get down and fight. And if I know Democrats, we're not anywhere near ready.

Seriously though, did you ever notice how democrats don't malign, smear, and discredit their opponents very well? Somehow, it's not in our nature. We don't have the Lee Atwater/Karl Rove tradition like they do, I suppose.

i would not vote for them. period.

unacceptable.

sure the whole truth about these candidates is spread far and wide and over and over again. You don't even have to spin it. The whole truth is disgusting enough on it's own.

Any Republican candidate that is backed by the Republican Party is part of this and guilty by association and by the fact they accepted any endorsement or money from this consortium of criminals.

I dont know if we have groups ready for that, I hope not.

Now, do we have groups ready to tell the truth is a better question.

before they have a chance to define themselves. It doesn't necessarily entail lying.

The Republicans lied in swiftboating Kerry, true. But sometimes the truth is just as damaging.

Let's say Allen is their candidate. Should we not run commercials early on which expose his racist past, replete with interviews with his high school and college classmates who have distinct memories of it (one of them is here on DU)? Should not those commercials saturate cable television and become the topic A of conversation for all the talking heads the WEEK after he is nominated??

That's why more people said Kerry attacked Bush unfairly than Bush did, they lump all attacks together. We don't realize that when the media isn't telling the truth, any advertisement that tells the truth is seen as an unfair attack. The media has to change or nothing will change.

But as we know the media is slanted hard to the right. The minute we would create a factual well researched and sourced ad about a rePUKE the media would immediately cry foul. They would spend weeks attacking the Democrats as mean spirited mud slingers without an agenda and to back up that opinion they would bring in "experts" like Coulter, Savage, and Limpballs to agree with them.

It would not be the same swiftboat deal that the rePUKES got in '04 where they are allowed to come on air and make their claims for weeks without being challenged.

...we have a winner.

voting machines have been corrupted and so has the country been corrupted...

voting machines have been corrupted and so has the country been corrupted...

Voice over:

"Well, it's that time again, primary season, when Republicans and they're 527 groups will be out in full force. They'll dig into the deep, dark past of every Democrat who is running for office, looking for something to spin, something to distort, something to manipulate. And if they can't find anything, that's okay, too -- they'll just make it up.

We Democrats won't be doing that. We won't be dredging up the Republicans' past mistakes, past scandals, past indiscretions. Besides, we don't have to.

All we have to do is point to the things that are going on right now.

Republican Duke Cunningham is in prison for taking bribes. Republican Bill Frist is under investigation for stock fraud, and fraud involving charitable donations that wound up in his own family's pockets. Republican Scooter Libby is under indictment. (et cetera, naming all of the current Repub scandals)

So we won't be wasting our time digging up the past records of Republicans. Their records are there for all to see -- just turn on the TV news, the radio, or pick up a newspaper.

It's all there -- well, all of it that we KNOW about right now, that is.

Vote Democrat this November. Send the GOP a message that because they've refused to clean their own house, you're going to do it for them.

People don't respond to reason or good will.

They respond to strong attacks and merciless pounding.

People will SAY in focus groups that they don't like negative advertising, but they end up letting it influence them anyway.

Running for President is a blood sport. Americans subliminally want to see which candidate will wrestle the other to the ground, because it makes them feel SAFE to place their security in the hands of the one they perceive as tougher and more aggressive.

I wish Americans responded only to issues, ideas, reason and good sense.

History shows they don't.

It is a TOTALLY negative ad, meant to 'smear' the other side. But points to the fact that Republican transgressions need not be ferreted out - they're blatant, they're well-publicized, and they're CURRENT.

The point is to REMIND the listener of what they have read, seen and heard about Republican scandals -- not from the ancient past, but in the last few weeks, few months -- hell, the past twenty-four hours.

I believe the Dems SHOULD go to negative advertizing -- but highlight the fact that we don't NEED to hire a team of investigators to dig into the other sides' pasts - we need only pick up the morning news.

Bush and the RNC defined Kerry negatively in the usual scummy RNC way - flipflopping, voting for hundreds of tax increases, windsurfing snob, etc.

Swiftboaters were a different kind of infected ooze, and so were the people who smeared McCain and his family in South Carolina. Bush and Rove probably approved both groups ahead of time, but they would not admit a connection because they know they are beyond scummy.

We have to have a higher standard than that or there's no point to fighting at all. Why should anyone work their butts off to set up the same integrity-sucking black hole again? So, the jerks in power lied and smeared and got away with it - I think they won a few elections by rigging the voting, too. That's another thing we can't do in the name of "getting tough".

If by "fight dirty" you mean we have to work hard to refute every smear, accurately and fast and loudly, and pester the hell out of any media outlet that lets lies slide - I'm with you on that.

before he pounds us. Getting aggressive and playing offense. Under no circumstances should we once again sit back and wait for them to attack first.

expect to win. Likely.. if McCain is running.. the issue of swiftboating will be a big one. Because he was and then he did their bidding.

If you didn't notice.. the Bush Admin lost most of its support because of childish war (I want one), childish execution of war (not enough troops..I have a utopian dream we will win) and a childish response to Katrina (what levies? Send me an itemized list or shut up governor).

So you yourself are welcome to give legitimacy to the Bush admin and their political arm by aping their actions. But don't expect the rest of us to behave as children just to make the race easier for GOP tactics.

I hope Kerry writes a book on the swiftboating of veterans. The details. And that it sells well in 2008. I hope that all Americans develop a clear understanding and history of what swiftboating is, what it looks like, how the GOP cannot win elections without it, etc.

The awful truth will sink the GOP. Why all of a sudden, when the country on the whole longs for adults.. would ya ape Karl Rove?