Optional page text here. The Beast's Lair: Recent Political Campaigns

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Recent Political Campaigns

What's the deal with the recent campaign ads? I hate election time just because of all the "smear techniques" that inevitably take place. They get old. But this year, I am amazed to be hearing this word thrown around: Immoral.

Since when do we care about morality? As long as the candidate does a good job, morality is pointless, right? That is their "personal life" and has nothing to do with their position as senator, president, etc.

I hope you can sense my sarcasm here. I, of course, believe that the personal morality of any candidate is important, I am just a little confused why all of a sudden the campaign trail is rallying around morality. Any ideas?

posted by PhilipMeade.com at 9:52 PM

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think a large part of it is that the republicans don't have a lot of great history to run on right now, so they fall back on the issue they think they have a solid win on, which is morality (or on the other side, democrats use it to bash a republican because he knows a republican's constituency generally feels strongly about those things). Because we all know if a person has sex with fewer people (that they admit to anyway) or drinks iced tea instead of wine that person is the better leader (which are the types of "morality" people tend to focus on in political battles...as opposed to little things like breaking the law, the "morality" of crushing the poor and minorities or the death of 4000 or 5000 innocent people (and I say that being generally a supporter of the war)). Hehe..I'm a little tired of politics right now as well.

October 25, 2006 12:16 AM  
Blogger PhilipMeade.com said...

I think your point of the republicans not having much else to go on (excpet maybe the economy recently) might be on to something.

However, in the ads I have seen, they are linking poor political choices with "immorality", not just personal decisions such as sexual perversion or alcohol. That is what sparks my interest, is that they are now incorporating both personl choice as immoral (which hasn't really been emphasized before) and political choice as immoral (which also seems to be new).

For example, a local ad here is talking about a candidate pushing to increase the minimum wage law, but then his family owns a restaurant that pays minimum wage. In the past, we would have heard words like "inconsistent!" But on this ad, the entire TV screen flashes in bold letters "IMMORAL." Maybe it does just go back to trying to tie in with what they think voters want, but I have no idea why in this culture all of a sudden they think morality is a hot topic.

October 25, 2006 11:15 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think for each election the strategy team identifies what is the single most signifcant issue for the local voters. Apparently for this year morality has worked its way to the top.

October 25, 2006 2:01 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

But then again people are pretty fed up with the Democrats too. The party that is supposed to be about the common man is anything but these days, and voters are getting sick of it all.

October 26, 2006 12:13 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home