{"id":1779,"date":"2004-05-17T11:17:30","date_gmt":"2004-05-17T16:17:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/1779.html"},"modified":"2004-05-17T11:17:30","modified_gmt":"2004-05-17T16:17:30","slug":"setting-the-bar-even-lower-for-political-discourse-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/setting-the-bar-even-lower-for-political-discourse-in-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Setting the bar even lower for political discourse in America"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the DNC notes that George W. Bush apparently failed to meet his obligations to the National Guard, it’s below the acceptable level of decency for political rhetoric, according to Republicans. If so, how should we react to the new RNC ad<\/a> that compares John Kerry to plant-sucking, lotus-like insects<\/a>?<\/p>\n

The RNC today sent a new web video to more than 700,000 Team Leaders, pointing out that John Kerry has a few things in common with the cicadas.<\/p>\n

“Nature is a consummate teacher and in this case the lesson is-no matter how hard they try, a cicada will always be a cicada and John Kerry will always be John Kerry,” said RNC Communications Director Jim Dyke.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I realize that this is more stunt than substance. In all likelihood, the RNC produced this ad so that it would become a topic of discussion and get shown, for free, all over the news. As such, Kerry’s campaign would be wise to ignore this altogether.<\/p>\n

That said, I can’t help but wonder where, exactly, the Republicans think the line of decency in political rhetoric now stands. If the RNC believes it’s fair to compare Kerry to cicada, would Republicans find it equally appropriate if the DNC compared Bush to, say, a chimp<\/a>? Just asking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the DNC notes that George W. Bush apparently failed to meet his obligations to the National Guard, it’s below the acceptable level of decency for political rhetoric, according to Republicans. If so, how should we react to the new RNC ad that compares John Kerry to plant-sucking, lotus-like insects? The RNC today sent a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}