dirty politics - why?

[radfringe]

because it works.

surveys, polls and other public opinion pieces all show people do not like dirty politics, smear campaigns, and mud-slinging. Yet it remains a staple of politics - why?

because it works. as long as it continues to work - it will be used.

polticians can appear to take the high ground, and drone on about the personal destruction, and how bad it is - however their own back-alley mud machines work overtime in getting the dirt out there

the dirt doesn't even have to be real dirt - it can be in the form of innuendo, rumor or just an outright 100% fabrication -- but it works.

this leaves the opposing poltician in a quandry - how to fight back
- denouncing the mud as mud is just blather and for the most part is ignored

- ignoring it doesn't make it go away. if anything the mud-slinger slings more mud to force a response, by then the candidate is submerged

- throw your own mud? that sets up a candidate as being hypocritical, denouncing mudslinging on one hand while throwing mud with the other

we may hate the mud, but it works

[punpirate]

1. Root cause...

... divide and conquer.

Cheers.

[orpupilofnature57]

2. As soon as theres more than two people in a room or garden, theres

politics.

[GrpCaptMandrake]

3. Well and truly said by a supporter of a candidate

who's been slimed.

Yeah, they all do it.

But they do it best who do best their research and bury the 16 inch common spike deep in the heart of the enemy.

The other side figured this out about 45 years ago.

Us, we're mostly still working on the list for the group "Kumbyyah" sing and looking for nice plaes to pick daisies.

:nuke: :evilfrown:

[Lasher]

4. Mud slinging has evolved

Now we've got swiftboat groups. They sling away, with wild disregard for truth. The swiftboaters relentlessly attacked Kerry, while Dumbya just stood back and left an impression that he was not involved. There was little or no reaction against Dumbya for all the vicious slander, because all that venom was coming from someone else - or at least that's the way it played out.

For too long, Kerry tried to stay above it all by not responding. Big mistake. In retrospect, I would have immediately responded by exposing the swiftboaters' many lies. That would have been easy to do. But next, I would have found my own swiftboater group to attack the repuke swiftboaters, continuously exposing their lies, bringing up questionable issues about each of them personally, making a connection between them and Dumbya, and attacking the Chimp in Chief while they are at it.

That's how I would fight back. It wouldn't be hard to get ready for this type of action, because it's so easy to predict what these fascists are going to do next.

[fasttense]

5. I'm not sure I agree with you.

Until the repukes started throwing mud, about 1998, there was a common understanding that mud slinging does not work. But now everyone throws mud and in the majority of cases it does work. So what happened? It use to be that when someone threw mud the mudslinger looked nasty and hateful. Some of that mud stuck to his hands and the polls and votes clearly showed this. But not now. Now a politician can throw all the mud he wants but voters don't seem to care that he is an SOB. So I ask you what happened to change this???

[MH1]

6. Dumbing down of the electorate?

Is that too simplistic an answer?

I do think the electorate has been dumbed down, whether through the cultural shift to passive information gathering through entertainment (i.e. boob tube replacing reading), degradation of the schools, the rise of fundamentalism....whatever.

I just think people process political information more stupidly than they use to. But there's probably other factors too.