THE POLITICS OF THE GUTTER

[Karen Anderson]

I am tempted to claim that Republicans are bottom-feeding low-lives whose values are so twisted by arrogance and the will to power that they are willing to lie, abuse power, and use character assassination to achieve their goals--but that would be negative. At present, this election is about more than the policy alternatives presented by two candidates. It is, instead, about dealing a death blow to the poison that Republicans have injected into our politics for far too long.

To take but one example, let’s look at the Georgia Senate race between Max Cleland and Saxby Chambliss in 2002. Cleland, an incumbent Democrat and a man who lost two legs and an arm fighting in Vietnam, was leading his opponent by a very large margin, when Chambliss started attacking (what else?) his patriotism. Because Cleland and 55 other Senators (including a number of Republicans) had voted for an amendment to the Chemical Weapons Treaty that George Bush opposed, Chambliss charged that Cleland was “breaking his oath to protect and defend the Constitution.” Chambliss won. He is up for re-election this fall and actually might be vulnerable. If you want to do something, give to the campaign of his opponent, Jim Martin, or to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee. The latter is trying to give Obama such strong numbers in the Senate that he can actually get his measures to the floor without a Republican filibuster. Remember the filibuster? It was used for decades to keep civil rights legislation from ever reaching a vote in the Senate. Now it is used to keep all kinds of progressive legislation bottled up in committee.

Now, Republicans are engaging in the same deception and mud-slinging that has been a hallmark of their politics at least since the 1980s. They are trying to depict Senator Obama as a wild-eyed radical who uses “class warfare” and espouses socialism because he wants to give the middle class a tax break. They are also trying to use the courts to disqualify voters at the last minute. It is so surreal. In the Republican world, those who reduce middle class taxes are socialists, those who question the Bush administration’s ruinous foreign policies are terrorist sympathizers, and those who register new voters are corrupting democracy while those who try to keep people from voting are patriots.

I will be working for the Obama campaign this afternoon. It helps to do something. I urge all of you to do the same.


Karen Anderson

[Jade Stokes]

Please pass the koolaid, Rev. Jones.