The Desperation Dodge

The last few weeks have witnessed a flurry of thoroughly reprehensible and dishonest political ads by Republican candidates and by the Republican National Committee in particular. This, of course, has surprised absolutely no one. What I find mildly annoying, therefore, is the constant suggestion by journalists and pundits the only reason the Republicans have descended into the sewer is because they are facing the prospect of a major loss. For example, here's Joe Klein:

In recent weeks, the Republicans unwrapped another moldy chestnut, advertisements proclaiming that Democrats will raise taxes. But that didn't seem to be working either because voters were focused on Iraq and Mark Foley. And so last week the Republicans unleashed a series of ads painting the Democrats as sex-crazed, homosexual-loving, porn-perusing--and in the case of the novelist and Virginia Senate candidate Jim Webb, porn-writing--perverts. It was vivid proof that the prospect of a hanging doesn't always concentrate the mind. Sometimes it leads to feral, piss-pants desperation.

And here's some similar, albeit less colorful analysis from Michael Grunwald of the Washington Post:

The result has been a carnival of ugly, especially on the GOP side, where operatives are trying to counter what polls show is a hostile political environment by casting opponents as fatally flawed characters. The National Republican Campaign Committee is spending more than 90 percent of its advertising budget on negative ads, according to GOP operatives, and the rest of the party seems to be following suit.

While I appreciate the fact that Klein and Grunwald and others are at least willing to acknowledge that this "carnival of ugly" is an almost exclusively Republican phenomenon, I'm annoyed by their reflexive need to attribute the use of these sleazy tactics to Republican desperation.

I have no doubt that many Republicans are panicking right now. This is certainly a more difficult political climate than they're used to. But you have to be suffering from a major case of political amnesia to think that the use of these tactics is somehow unique to this election cycle.

Let's do a little thought experiment. Suppose the situation were reversed right now and the Republicans looked to be on the verge of picking up a lot of Congressional seats. Do you think they'd refrain from using sleazy negative ads? Of course not. This is all the RNC knows how to do. They'd be on the attack just like they are now, just like they always are, trying to wrestle every last vote they can away from their opponents. They've done this in election cycle after election cycle, even when conditions were much more favorable for Republican candidates.

And since everyone is so fond of comparing this election cycle to 1994, perhaps someone can point me toward all the Democratic ads from that year which falsely accused Republicans of scandalous behavior and played upon everyone's worst instincts. If desperation is really the root cause of all this, shouldn't it work both ways? After all, it's not as if the Democratic party doesn't know a thing or two about desperation.

Look, anyone who follows politics closely and isn't delusionally partisan will admit, at least off the record, that, on balance, the Republican party has far less scruples when it comes to political advertising. They're willing to be more deceptive, more negative, more demogogic. Republican operatives long ago embraced the by-any-means-necessary school of politics. So let's dispense with the fiction that this current spate of negativity is somehow a byproduct of Republican desperation. It's not. It's just Republican business as usual.