Sunday, September 7, 2008

Fear & Smear: The Alberta Darling Edition

It's been a long standing tradition in politics for a candidate to try to cast his or her opponent in a bad light. Usually these attacks consists of the usual, worn out dog and pony shows of "So and so is going to raise your taxes so you'll lose your home" or "Such and such wants to give all our money to Big Whatever, and old people will be eating cat food."

In the past several elections cycles, this habit has become increasingly vulgar. I thought it had reached its crescendo when Bush and Rove went after John Kerry with the one-two punch of swiftboating and the 9/11 mantra.

This year is shaping to make that look like romantic cooing. Racist and sexist comments have been flying back and forth for almost two years now, and will only escalate as we get closer to November.

This kind of crap is continuing on the local level as well.

Recently, Alberta Darling and Sheldon Wasserman appeared on Up Front with Mike Gousha. JSOnline's All Politics blog was kind enough to provide links for the show.

In the first segment, Wasserman drives home that Darling has been failing to support her own district's education system. He pointed out that she only gets 11 cents back from every dollar taxpayers put into the state's education fund.

In the second segment, Darling brings up the false allegation about Wasserman spreading inappropriate things about her health, and whether it would be a factor in the campaign. She even went as far as accusing Wasserman himself of being the author of that statement. When he confronted her, she had no proof, except that it was her "belief" that he was behind it all. You knew she was lying through her teeth when she started using Charlie Sykes as a reference.

Wasserman, rightfully upset, confronted her, asked for proof, and reminded her that he had actually publicly condemned the rumor and anyone who would spread it.

For the record, I don't believe that Darling is too sick to do her own canvassing. I think she would rather save her energy for the golf course.

The All Politics blog also reported that she issued a press release that she would "protect" the citizenry from voter fraud by requiring Voter ID:
"Voter fraud could have sweeping implications for state and national elections, where in some states voter drives have added hundreds of thousands of 'new' voters to the voter rolls," Darling said in a statement. "People want to know that their vote means something, and not be cancelled out by groups of people here to commit voter fraud."

I can't quite understand how new voters are a bad thing, but then again, I'm not the one trying to maintain the status quo. I am waiting for her to offer proof of voter fraud. I won't hold my breath though. After all, the system is working the way it is supposed to. And I really would be surprised if she would actually try to correct the area where most voter fraud does occur, absentee balloting.

She is just cranky because now that she has a real race going on, she can't play as much golf.

1 comment:

  1. I agree. I've become disenchanted with Darling not because of her health, but because she refuses to support the one change in our political system that will take our politicians out of the pockets of the special interests.

    She likes public funding of campaigns to clean up the judicial system, but opposes them to clean up the state legislature. Go figure. When you are raising more dollars than your opponent I guess you can afford this double standard.

    Jack Lohman
    http://MoneyedPoliticians.net

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