The Low Road

We opened our morning papers to headlines trumpeting Karl Rove's "genius." Whatever afflicts Rove, though, appears not to be catching.

The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight.
N.C. House Dist. 93 incumbent, Republican Gene Wilson, has mailed out an over-size postcard screaming "It's Time For a Change!" Wilson is a 16-year incumbent. And we couldn't agree more. Whatever, you do, Sleepy Gene, don't stop campaigning. We needed the belly laugh.

Messaging: Don't Think of an Elephant.
Since local Hardee's franchise-holder and convicted tax evader Jim Hastings took charge of the local Republican message, he's put up six radio spots that scream "librul librul librul" and "beware of OUTSIDERS!"

Where was Jim Hastings born? (dunno, but not in Watauga County)

Where was Virginia Foxx born? (New Yawk City)

Where was David Blust born? (Ohio)

We could go on. Of course, it's not about outsiders and it's not about "libruls." It's about stirring up the prejudices of rural people, the prime audience for local radio. Or, rather, it's about TRYING to stir up the prejudices of rural people ... in a year when the usual Republican base is turning deaf ears to the people they generally listen to.

The Hastings' message plan is to distract people with fear of outsiders -- gays, vegetarians, college students, llama-breeders. His party has led us down a rat-hole and into hopeless foreign entanglements, but he wants his rural listeners to fear their neighbors.

Of course, that's classic Karl Rove. And we fully expect their negative, divisive feces to coat every available surface during this last week before the election. We look especially for Madam Foxx to begin unloading a nasty dumptruck-load on Roger Sharpe, now that an independent poll shows her with less than 50% support and Sharpe within six points of overtaking her. (More on that poll later.)

They can't do ANYTHING honestly. Locally in Watauga County, the GOP was going to run against the new high school and even wrote their platform to incorporate that idea. But their own candidates wouldn't toe that line consistently. Then they decided to blow Boone's steep-slope development regs up into a big commie-pinko-socialist plot and discovered that the people in the county aren't, after all, as dumb as doorknobs, and that message has failed miserably. Now they're down to the scraps of tired old formulas that worked pretty well when Jesse Helms roamed the earth ... "librul outsiders are poisoning your vital bodily fluids!"

How pathetic. We agree with Gene Wilson.