Here we are in the first days of August (a time some of my fellow contributors seem to loathe) and, while the actual political news is quite thin, the political ad wars continue unabated.
If anything, they seem to be taking matters to a new and more disturbing level. Consider this entry from Priorities USA, a superPAC allied with the President:
Got that? Mitt Romney is a killer.
It’s almost enough to make one pine for the more civilized tone of the 1800 presidential contest between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams:
And the lunacy has trickled down and gotten personal. In this Daily Kos diary, our own Alton Foley was raked over the coals for his dust-up with Josh Chernila.
Those things happen. What’s odd about this particular one is that the original DK diary also contained one of the more vicious, and utterly false, charges I’ve seen in a while. It wasn’t directed at Alton, but rather at the Koch brothers, who serve as both whipping boys and bogeymen to folks on the left. In the DK entry, Josh makes great leaps to link the Kochs to Nazi war criminals…based upon nothing more than a shared last name and a very active imagination.
The cleaned-up version on Blue Virginia still takes Alton to task, but the Koch libel has been scrubbed. Small favors…aren’t they nice?
Alton is a big enough man to ignore the brickbats aimed at him. But some folks on the left seem to have a need not only to disagree with people, but demonize them. There’s a theme building on the right now that Mr. Obama doesn’t just disagree with Mitt Romney, but has a visceral hatred for him:
When Hillary Rosen attacks Ann Romney or Stephanie Cutter wonders aloud whether Mitt Romney is a felon, it reflects a campaign culture that starts with the man in charge. The longer the race goes on, the deeper those resentments will become and the more danger there will be of intemperate actions by Obama team members.
We shall see. But the signs are there that some sort of animus is spreading outside the campaign, appearing in the ads of interest groups and reaching down even into the diaries of the faithful. The left is barking mad.
Maybe it’s all August’s fault…
