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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
As part of the same concerted campaign, this week a conservative "527" advocacy group with close ties to the White House began airing a Kerry attack ad featuring photos of 9/11 hijacker Mohammad Atta, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and a grainy image of Kerry. The ad's narrator states, "These people want to kill us. They killed hundreds of innocent children in Russia, 200 innocent commuters in Spain and 3,000 innocent Americans. Would you trust Kerry against the fanatic killers?" The ad was created by the Progress for America Voter Fund, which is headed by Tony Feather, a longtime ally and former student of White House political chief Karl Rove. Feather served as the political director of Bush's 2000 presidential campaign.
The charged rhetoric by Republicans has been evident all year. Last March, Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., told a group of Republicans: "If George Bush loses the election, Osama bin Laden wins the election." The talking points were first put into play last spring by right-wing radio show host Rush Limbaugh, who has routinely equated Democrats with terrorists. For example:
Remarks Brinkley: "It's exactly the same kind of Cold War rhetoric: 'A vote for so-and-so is a victory for communists.' Or, 'Communists really hope so and so wins.' They're not calling that person a communist, but the implication is that his commitment to fighting communism is so soft" that he aids the enemy. "It's the same kind of tactics that were at the core of the Republican tactics in the early '50s."
The Republican claims that Kerry would be soft on terrorism have brought a swift response from some quarters. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., called Cheney's assertion that al-Qaida wants Kerry to win "the most outrageous charge," calling it "McCarthyism of the first order." A number of editorial pages have strongly condemned this Republican campaign tactic. The New York Times, in an extraordinary lead editorial, thundered that President Bush's campaign strategy was "un-American." The Los Angeles Times called Bush a "coward" for failing to denounce the terrorist-related attacks on Kerry.
But mainly the press has treated this Republican rhetoric as just another development on the campaign trail. A CNN report this week, noting that Kerry had criticized Bush for bungling the war on terror, concluded it was fair to say "both sides can now be described as trying to politically exploit the issue," as if Republicans charging that terrorists would prefer a Kerry victory were the same as Democrats critiquing Bush's foreign policy.
The Washington Post's Sept. 24 article also stretched when trying to show balance by pointing to "questionable rhetoric" on the Democratic side equivalent to Sen. Hatch's suggestion that terrorists are working hard to elect Kerry. The Post's example? The crude sexual pun comedian Whoopi Goldberg had made at Bush's expense at a celebrity fundraiser for Kerry this summer.
"That kind of equation is ridiculous," Marder says. "Someone will always provide an inadequate parallel to try to deal with [the subject]."
"It's a bit like reporters in dealing with McCarthy," says Lewis. He notes that most reporters then were overly anxious to dutifully report McCarthy's accusations as though they were objective news, and that today reporters are trying to present the contemporary versions with false balance. "They haven't figured it out yet."
