Those liberals-who-would-be-President are dragging the debate and discourse of the campaign for President further and further south. Unfortunately for them, and good for the GOP, the shrillness of the Ringwraiths vying for the Democratic Party nod causes them to sound less and less presidential.
Conservative political observers have been noting this for some time, while the Left in the media and the rest of the Democratic Party have been ignoring and denying it, respectively. Finally, though, the media has been forced to face Republicans' claims about the low level of "Dem speak": last Sunday Ed Gillespie, the new chairman of the Republican National Committee, appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" with Tim Russert and made a statement of which pundits around the country took note. He said:
. . . If you saw the debate the other night with the nine Democratic presidential candidates, I think history will show that this field has taken presidential discourse to a new low. The kind of rhetoric you hear from these folks when-you know, on neither side of the aisle, Ronald Reagan never said that Jimmy Carter couldn’t find countries in his own hemisphere. Walter Mondale never said that President Reagan was a "miserable failure." When Bill Clinton ran against President Bush, he didn’t compare him to Saddam Hussein or the Taliban. And when Bob Dole ran against President Clinton, he didn’t say that he was an absolute phony or a liar.
The kind of words we’re hearing now from the Democratic candidates go beyond political debate. This is political hate speech. And I think that the American people will reject that approach. They appreciate the president’s strong and principled leadership and the fact that he has a positive agenda, and they have, frankly, nothing but negativity and pessimism and protest to offer.
Mr. Gillespie could not have been more accurate. Consider for a moment a few gems from the junior Senator from Massachusetts, John Kerry.
(September 4, 2003, Congressional Hispanic Caucus Democratic debate)
Of course, Democrats excuse the behavior of Sen. Kerry and the rest of the Nine by claiming that Republicans have long engaged in negative attacks. However, though that may be true of some GOPers, that cannot be said of GOP presidential candidates, especially not George W. Bush. He has gone out of his way not to criticize Democrats (much to the chagrin of many Republicans), much less ridicule them. Also, were it so that Bush and other Republican presidential candidates made such attacks, how would those instances excuse the crass rhetoric the Democrats are currently spouting?
This kind of "debate" is beneath a candidate for the highest office in the nation. Thankfully for Karl Rove and the rest of the Bush political team, most of the Democrats are blinded by such a strong Bush-hatred and lust for the Democratic nomination that they cannot, or will not, recognize the offensiveness of their statements.
Keep it up, Democrats. You are only making the GOP's case for them.
