Friday, November 3, 2006

The nasty final days

In the past, I've inclined toward the view that much of the hand-wringing about negative ads is overdone. Why shouldn't a Republican who believes that the Iraq war has struck a blow against terrorists argue that his or her opponent, who considers it a strategic debacle, is weak on national security? Similarly, why can't a Democrat who supports stem-cell research argue that a Republican who opposes it stands in the way of medical breakthroughs -- without getting tut-tutted by goo goo pundits? We define ourselves in part by what we stand against. I wrote about a (not entirely convincing) book called "In Defense of Negativity" earlier this year. (Sample quote: "If negativity ever happened to disappear from our electoral battles, we can safely assume that so would our freedoms.")

The ads this year, though, test the fiber of even the most staunchly pro-negative among us. Evan has cited the ad targeting U.S. Senate candidate Harold Ford, but that's kid stuff compared to this, which Paul R. Nelson, a Republican, is running against Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wisc.). The shock jocks Opie and Anthony have been bowing down before this ad, citing it, partisanship aside, as a work of demented genius. (The ad says Kind votes against military spending and cancer research, preferring to use tax dollars to research "the masturbation habits of old men" and to pay "teenage girls to watch pornography with probes attached to their genitals." An earlier version of the ad was used against Democratic Rep. Brad Miller, of North Carolina.) Here's another Nelson ad, ridiculing a fictional marriage between "two dudes."

The nonpartisan ad dissectors at Factcheck.org, based at the University of Pennsylvania, call the sex-studies ad "fact-twisting bunk." (They analyze the North Carolina version.) More broadly, here are the group's analyses of ads financed this fall by the Democratic National Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Republican National Campaign Committee (RNCC).

No shortage of bunkum on either side, but whether it's because they're behind in many races, or because they are running on "values" issues -- and therefore want to portray the Democrats as morally impaired -- the Republicans are running nastier, more personal ads this year, the group concludes.

More fact-checking can be found here.

Posted by Christopher Shea at 05:13 PM

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