For me, politics is not personal. I am privileged to have a lot of friends of high character who hold left-of-center views with which I disagree. Our political disagreements are just that – mere disagreements between friends, and I respect and admire these friends as good people who sincerely believe their liberal views are best for our country and society.
Likewise, there are a lot of liberals in public office with whom I disagree but whom I respect for their character and sincerity. In Virginia, Doug Wilder, Jim Webb, Mark Warner, Bobby Scott, and Glenn Nye come immediately to mind. Nationally, I would say the same about Dennis Kucinich, John McCain, Bob Beckel, and Alan Colmes. I disagree with them politically, but I respect them on a personal level.
Unfortunately, Tim Kaine does not fall into this category, and I have reluctantly come to dislike him on a personal level.
It will surprise no one that I disagree with Kaine’s leftist politics. No one would expect a conservative to support a candidate whose deepest regret about his term as governor is that he failed to raise our taxes by billions of dollars. But these political disagreements have nothing to do with my view of Kaine as a person.
My dislike for Kaine comes from the dishonest and uncivil campaign that he has been running for Senate. The latest example is this ad currently running on Facebook:
There are so many things wrong with this ad that it’s hard to know where to start. First, it is patently false that any of his political opponents are trying to “suppress” votes in Virginia. Kaine’s ad is referring to a newly-passed bill that requires voters to bring a form of identification with them to the polls in order to cast their votes. The obvious purpose of the bill is to prevent voter fraud – a problem that has been demonstrated to exist in Virginia. To equate this new law with segregation-era Jim Crow laws (which were implemented by the Democrats and opposed by the Republicans) is just plain defamatory. And, by the way, this kind of voter ID law has been upheld by the courts as constitutional and has been implemented by 17 other states.
Second, to invoke the recount in Florida in the 2000 presidential election as an example of voter suppression is equally dishonest and revisionist. By every account, George W. Bush won the election fair and square based on the rules that were in place prior to the election. The only way Al Gore could have obtained a victory in that election would have been to change the rules after the election – which the Florida Supreme Court (on which all but one of the justices were Democrat appointees) attempted to do until the U.S. Supreme Court stopped them. And, by the way, an independent vote count conducted by a consortium of major news media concluded that Bush legitimately won the election – a fact that has been utterly ignored by the Democrats and their “news” media allies ever since.
Third, this Kaine Facebook ad shows an appalling disrespect to his own support base. When a person clicks on the ad, the person is directed to a “petition” to oppose the supposed “voter suppression.” This so-called “petition” is not ever going to be sent to anyone. It is designed to gin up righteous indignation by uninformed liberals and trick them into providing their contact information so that Kaine can send them more campaign propaganda going forward.
In short, Tim Kaine’s Facebook ad is an intentional lie designed to fool people into providing his campaign with their personal information so that he can continue to send them his dishonest propaganda.
The fact that Kaine is running a campaign designed to fool the voters demonstrates how weak he is as a candidate on the merits. This is hardly surprising considering that his last job was to serve as cheerleader-in-chief for Barack Obama, who is running the exact same kind of campaign.
If Tim Kaine ran a campaign that was honest about his positions on the issues and his record in office, he would earn my respect – but he would lose the election.
