The Year Of Playing Dirtier – washingtonpost.com
It is harder for Republicans to blame out-of-power Democrats for the current state of Washington, but they are equally eager to depress Democratic turnout and fire up their conservative base.
It may be that, after a conversation about ‘the liberal media’ yesterday with a definitely conservative coworker, I’m just looking for the Post’s liberal bias, but this line jumped out at me. The article, up to then, had been close enough to balanced (It said that both parties are stooping to new lows in negative political ads, and the Republicans are worse about it. That’s sort of unbiased) that I could live with it. But if the Post honestly believes that the Democrats are completely blameless for the state of the country, I don’t even know what to say.
Back to the point of the article, though. I’m pretty sick of smear ads. Being near DC, we get both Virginia and Maryland ads. George Allen and Jim Webb, running for Senate from VA, have been sniping at each other for a while. Allen doesn’t seem to be trying that hard – he’s still focusing on some comments Webb made in 1979-80. Allen also responded to my angry letter, which is nice. I’m still voting for Webb, though.
I wish we’d get to hear why I should vote for one guy rather than why I shouldn’t vote for the other guy. I’m tired of voting against the unacceptable canidate. I’d really like to vote for someone because I think he or she is going to do a good job. Is that too much to ask?