Reply #6: As if this were a new tactic [View All]

[DFW]

Starting with Nixon's Dirty Tricks team (of which Fox "News" director Roger Ailes is a veteran),
the Republicans have always engaged in this kind of stuff (although I don't recall anything
really offensive from Gerry Ford's 1976 campaign). From derailing Muskie in 1972, Reagan and
Iran in 1980, the hugely funded hate-the-Clintons apparatus, 1992-present, and the "Swiftboaters,"
the Republicans ALWAYS engage in hugely funded smear campaigns of this sort, and always against
that Democrat that they fear the most. It's almost a badge of front-runner status to have them do
this. Were it illegal, and carrying a mandatory 30 year prison term, there wouldn't have been one
Republican president elected since Eisenhower.

The only elections since 1968 I can recall where this not used as SOP for the right wing were 1984,
when they knew it was not necessary, and 1996, when they knew they had no chance. Like 2000, they don't
think their chances are good in 2008, but nothing succeeds like success, and the 2000 and 2004 elections
proved that in spades.