Back from the trenches

Whew! I guess, for the time being anyway, my work is done on the '06 elections, and at long last I actually have a day off. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. It has been immensely satisfying to leap from the "sidelines" into the game itself, and lend my few known talents to the creation of a significant number of political TV advertisements that polls show are making a difference.

Why, on one ballot issue alone, we've gone from a position of 43 points down to 3 points ahead in just five weeks' time. Outstanding.

I guess I'm especially proud that the ads I've worked on around the clock - and, not insignificantly, the people I've worked with - have confined themselves to the truth, and avoided the descent into juvenile mean-spiritedness which seems to have infected most American political advertising these days. Of course, that's what's possible when you actually have facts supporting your position, and aren't reduced to name-calling and mud-slinging and fear-mongering as a tactic, simply because you have nothing else to say.

Which brings us to the Republican Party, a group whose demonstrable incompetence has been matched lately by one of the most disgusting collections of televised slander and slime I can remember during an election season. And believe me, having been around since the Eisenhower years, I've seen a quite a few!

The overall tenor of GOP television commercials this year should, in and of itself, be enough to convince America that the Ruling Party is no longer fit to serve - not that they've been "serving" America in any discernible way to begin with. These snippets of videotape have been a mirror into the rotted soul of a political entity which, in its 12 years of control in Washington, has created domestic and international messes that will not be corrected in my lifetime.

Republicans, who long ago promised a "Contract with America" have instead effected a contract on America, plotting and executing a series of assassinations, murdering one by one the essential rights and freedoms that had defined this nation for hundreds of years before their tenure.

Likewise, a Republican Administration that convinced the gullible it was going to "restore honor and integrity to the White House" - as if either were really missing - has instead defined "honor" as fiscal irresponsibility, rampant cronyism, and the advocacy of torture as official U.S. policy, and has somehow interpreted "integrity" to mean lying the country into a needless foreign invasion at the expense of tens of thousands of lives.

So I'm honestly glad to see the approach Republican ads (and their supporters) have taken over the past few months, because they so clearly define the core values which the term "Republican" has come to represent. Small-mindedness. Viciousness. Disregard for the truth. Hysteria. Desperation. Hypocrisy. Lust for power.

And underlying everything, a fundamental disrespect for the American voter.

As I said, I'm proud of the work I've done this fall. I'd like to doubt that the creators of those odious "The Stakes" ads feel the same way - but sadly, if recent history is any indication, I'm sure the Rovian minds behind that piece of propaganda believe fervently that the only way to keep the unwashed rabble in line is through misinformation, deception, and its own brand of domestic terrorism.

For Liberals to merely regain control of Congress in a "squeaker" isn't justice enough for this crowd. Let's instead reward the GOP's continued cowardice, repulsiveness, and stubborn idiocy with a crushing defeat on Tuesday.