I live in Kansas and don’t have a vote in this race, however the local television stations have been playing ads like this for weeks. I am getting a little tired of hearing ads like this. There is no way that this represents a reasonable form of discourse. Anybody out there going to the Rally to Restore Sanity?
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Roy Blunt and Robin Carnahan – Are you serious?
Rev. Andrew Conard 
9 replies on “Roy Blunt and Robin Carnahan – Are you serious?”
I can’t wait until this election season is over… or any election season for that matter..
if they only put that much thought and effort (and money) in changing things that need to be changed instead of bashing each other….
Agreed.
Andrew,
Mr. Blunt and I are graduates of the same faith based university, this doesn’t mean that I support him, I can’t because of where I live. The Blunt and Carnahan families share the same faith tradition and I appreciate both of them.
Jim – Thanks for your comment. I am glad that you appreciate both of these candidates. I do not appreciate the way that they are campaigning, regardless of their faith tradition.
We have only the voters to blame for this. They do this because it works, and it works because people don’t vote based on party platforms or policy position, they vote based on their own perceived sense of Character. As a result Character asassination has been en vogue since its precipitous rise during Clinton’s first run for the Whitehouse. The Politics of Personal destruction has been around forever in some ways but was mastered and advanced under the guidance of James Carvill. Of course Rove picked up the stick and advanced it During the Bush administration, adding a touch of fear mongering and gay baiting, then Rham Emmanuel took up the mantle etc as what has been said to be the most ruthless cut throat Chief of Staff role ever (What he said and did to blue dog’s during the health care reform debate is legendary) Each successive practitioner has become more adept ad destroying people’s credibility. I saw yesterday in the star a Hatchet job by the Stephane Moore Campaign questioning whether Kevin Yoder had driven under the influence. Likewise Meg Whitman was torched by Jerry Brown in California. Again the problem is this stuff has been shown to work, extremely well, which means the problem is not so much with the Candidates or the Campaigns, as it is with us.
Chuck – Indeed, you put out a good point. If it wasn’t effective, it wouldn’t happen. * sigh *
Hmm, Just watched the two Ads you have up. Not sure why you object to these particular ads. I assumed maybe you were talking about the adds that Carnahan runs accusing Blunt of being a money man for the tabacco lobby, or the ones Blunt run’s accusing her of improperly influencing the money from the stimulus bill towards her Brothers wind farm project. Both of those are inflamatory and all about attacking character. The two above seem to me to be policy debate ads, which I have no problem with. Blunt suggest carnahan will continue Obama’s liberal policies… I see no reason to doubt that assertion, it seems like a legitimate debate over a policy direction. Carnahan is pointing to votes and positions blunt has taken and is suggesting that these positions directly lead to our current economic situation. Its not a position I agree with but its certainly one way of looking at the history, and again its a debate over policy which I think is healthy and positive. Perhaps the ending of Carnahan’s spot is off base – “The Very Worst of Washington” but you would suspect her ad’s to be a little more hard hitting given her trailing position in the polls.
I guess my question is, what would be a proper campaign ad? Should candidates not point out policy positions held by their opponent with which they disagree – and by proxy assume that most of the population disagrees? To me so called “Negative” ads arent the problem, in fact they are quite helpful in some ways. What is problematic is when candidates go over the line and attack peoples character (I.E. the Democratic Senatorial Candidate attacking the Republicans committment to his faith in Kentucky), or the New York Republican Governor Nominee suggesting that the Democrat Nominee has had an affair. To me there is a qualitative difference between the two. I welcome the first, in order to be better informed, I am disgusted by the latter.
Also, I love campaign season, its my favorite time of the year…. but then I’m weird and have a political science degree lol.
Chuck – You make a good point about the difference between policy and personal character. I suppose my main issue is that despite it being about policy, the tone is one of attack of another and not promotion of oneself.
Thought this was an interesting research piece on the nature of the Attack Ads. The long and short of it is Dem’s and Rep’s both ran negative ads about 37 percent of the time, but intentionally personal character assasination ads were 3-1 Democrat to Republican. This probably would be different in a year where Democrats owned the issue set and had the overwhelming number of independents supporting them. My guess is the people who have no where to go policy wise, resort to personal character assasination.
http://election-ad.research.wesleyan.edu/2010/10/26/negativity-update/