Misleading by Mail
by Ari Berman
Link to ArticleKarl Rove became a political legend by using direct mail to win close and frequently nasty elections. So it's no surprise that in the final weeks of the presidential campaign Republican mailings in swing states have become increasingly incendiary, aiming to scare voters into giving George W. Bush a second term in office."Why do the Democrats Want to Reinstitute the Draft?" asks a huge headline in a recent letter sent by the Iowa Publican Party to voters in the hotly contested Midwestern battleground. "On Nov. 2nd, tell the Democrats What You Think of Their Plan!" says the second page. (View here and scroll down midway.) While it's true that last January Congressman Charles Rangel and 14 Democratic cosponsors drafted a bill calling for mandatory national service, they did so as a protest against the Iraq war and as a measure to draw attention to the over-extention and skewed demographics of the current military. The problem for Bush is that the logical extreme of his militant foreign policy would seem to require an enlarged military and neither he, nor his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, have offered any proposal for how they plan to achieve this. Instead Republicans skew the context to hide their own failed policies. Meanwhile, a mailing by the Republican Party in Pennsylvania features chilling photographs from the Sept 12, 2001 covers of eight newspapers (many conveniently from swing states like Florida and Ohio) and asks "How Can John Kerry Lead America In a Time of War?" (View here.) The next page of the letter shows a lone image of the Twin Towers burning, before listing intelligence and defense cuts supported by Kerry, failing to note that Dick Cheney also advocated eliminating the same costly and outdated weapons.The trickery also extends to Florida, where Republicans are running newspaper ads and distrubuting fliers placing Kerry's picture next to Yasser Arafat in an attempt to convince Jewish voters that Kerry supports the ailing Palestinian leader. On Sunday morning stickers reading "Arafat endorses" appeared on Kerry- Edwards signs in heavily Jewish Miami Beach, though it's not clear who put them up. Kerry has a 100 percent lifetime pro-Israel approval rating from AIPAC and his website calls Arafat "a failed leader unfit to be a partner for peace." These tactics aren't new. In 2002, Republican Saxby Chambliss defeated incumbent Democratic Georgia Senator Max Cleland on the strength of an ad flashing pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden before Cleland while questioning the war hero's "courage to lead" because of his procedural votes against the creation of a Department of Homeland Security. Cleland--who lost three limbs in Vietnam--supported a Democratic version that, unlike the Republican bill cited in the ad, included normal labor protection provisions for its workers. That's how the GOP operates. While bragging about spreading "freedom" to Afghanistan and Iraq, Republicans continually embrace the politics of fear at home. In response to the recent pre-election videotape from Osama bin Laden, a senior GOP strategist told the New York Daily News, "anything that makes people nervous about their personal safety helps Bush." In an Orwellian turn of phrase, he called the tape "a little gift." Trick or treat! These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. If you have accounts on these bookmarking sites, you can post this story to share it with others.
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