Political Disgust

At what point do you draw the line on political attacks? George W. Bush is an inarticulate and incompetent puppet, John Kerry is a flip-flopping hypocrite, Bill Clinton is an oversexed buffoon, and Dan Quayle is a stupid moron. All of these are standard fodder for one side or the other and are actually somewhat tame in relation to history. But, at what point do you cross the line?

There's been some flak down in Florida about a Tampa group that has put up banner ads saying that we should "pull the trigger" and "execute" Don Rumsfeld. A liberal paper has posted that "Uncle Tom" Powell is going out to do the bidding for "Massah" Bush. Gary Trudeau has even stepped in by suggesting that Bush calls Dr. Rice, "Brown Sugar." I'm sure Republicans are doing similar things in areas of strong Democratic support.

I just feel that if you want to paint a perception of a person based on their political actions, you have that right. People may not like it but that's part of politics. But calling for open violence against someone or using racial slurs just because you disagree with someone is a bit over the line.

While I'm in politics, I'd just like to rant on both candidates at the moment. I consider myself a right leaning moderate who will look at both candidates and what they propose. I was very much in favor of Senator Lieberman back during the Democratic primary. The country is very polarized right now and you're going to get about 70% of the country who is going to vote strictly based on whether the candidate has an R or a D next to their name. Since you have a narrow margin of people who pay attention to issues and camp in the middle, you would think that both parties would try and grab a centrist. Nope. Instead you have a tax cut happy, right winger in Bush and a spend, spend spend left winger in Kerry. Quite frankly, neither economic policy agrees with me and its a case of trying to pick the lesser of two evils.

To paraphrase Richard III, "A moderate, a moderate; my kingdom for a moderate."