GOP Goes All Out, and Way Over the Line

Jacob Weisberg does an effective job of detailing how the GOP has sunk to a new low this election cycle in their commercials. Yes, the Democrats run negative ads, but they're about the President, and Iraq, big oil, and corruption. The GOP?

If there were an Oscar for political slime, it would go to "Twilight Zone," a spot run by Vernon Robinson, a congressional challenger in North Carolina. In 60 seconds, the ad manages to tie Democrat Brad Miller to Osama, gay marriage, "lesbians and feminists," activist judges, infanticide, flag-burning, racial quotas, space aliens, illegal immigrants, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton. In another ad, Robinson stamps "XXX" across Miller's face, claiming that his opponent refused to support body armor for troops in Iraq but that he "pays for sex" and that he "spent your tax dollars to pay teenage girls to watch pornographic movies with probes connected to their genitalia." It's all mendacious nonsense, but Paul Nelson, a Republican running for Congress in Wisconsin, liked the ad so much he ran it virtually unchanged against his own opponent.

Even factcheck.org, an independent group that analyzes commercials for validity, finds that the GOP's ads are out of line.