Democrats Getting Desperate- going Ad Hominem

Dunstan said:
I don't see the problem. What's wrong with "ad hominem" attacks on a candidate for public office?

Character has always been an issue in such campaigns, because the public is being asked to trust that person's integrity, honesty, judgment, intelligence, etc.

If Candidate X is a convicted criminal who has embezzled public funds, tortured small children, and lied about it under oath, and I point that out, are you really going to cry "no fair! Ad hominem! Ad hominem! Personal attack!"

You would have a point if an election was a referendum on a particular issue: if X was simply a spokesperson for the "Repeal the Death Penalty" ballot proposition, then pointing out X's character flaws would be a logical fallacy because they don't bear on the appropriateness of having a death penalty.

Of course, if the charges are false, that's another story -- but then the problem is not the nature of the charges, but their falsity. It would be just as bad to lie about the merits of a candidate's policy positions.

And we have varying degrees of consensus that certain personal issues are "off limits" because they aren't sufficiently relevant to a candidate's fitness for office -- but again, that just means that certain attacks are considered inappropriate.
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This.

I'd add that the number of Tea Party candidates this year make it a lot easier for the Democratic opponents to point out the gaping character defects.
 
I would like this study to be corrected for "attack ads" that are making personal attacks that are both true and relevant.

I reject that these are ad hominem fallacies. In the case of an election, the question being debated is which person to vote for, so make arguments about the person is in fact completely relevant. The ad hominem fallacy is a kind of irrelevant argument. If you're debating abortion or gun control, for example, any argument to the person is irrelevant. If you're debating which person to elect, arguments to the person are relevant.

The big question should be, "Are they factual?"
 
easycruise said:
""In one typical example, Democratic ads have transformed Kentucky Republican House candidate Andy Barr into "a convicted criminal" -- complete with images yellow police tape and fuzzy video of crime scenes. Not mentioned is his crime: As a college student 19 years ago, he was caught using a fake ID during spring break.""
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Hmmm, in the very first line of your link, they use an ad against David Vitter for seeing a prostitute and related behavior as an example of an attack ad. Problem is, the ad is actually factual.

Which raises the very relevant question: What is an attack ad? One mans poison is another mans pill. Consider the exchange between Brown and Whitman a couple of days ago regarding the California governor race. At the prompting of that idiot Matt Lauer, Brown agreed to pull all negative ads but Whitman demurred saying that it was perfectly valid to run attack ads against Brown's political positions. For once, eMeg was right. What one person thinks is ad hom will be, for someone else, a perfectly valid political argument.
 
Magyar said:
Of course our right leaning friends, as usual, conveniently ignore fact and reality. That
these numbers based on party spending where all moneys have to be accounted for.

So while Dems are "showing" spending more money from registered legal sources, the Reps are taking advantage of the sleaze ball rule the SCOTUS allowed.
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My point earlier. Thank you.
 
easycruise said:
Pretty sad that they are reducing themselves to personal attacks.
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From another perspective, do you consider it a personal attack if someone is called an ignorant creationist, as most prominent Republicans are, and the rest don't care?

Do you consider it personal if someone is called an ignorant AGW denier?

Do you consider it personal if someone is called an idiot if they don't know what the constitution says about religion and state?

Do you consider it personal if someone is called a blatant hypocrite, like Gingrich's wife called him?

Do you consider it personal if someone is called a liar for claiming that Republicans (though they had help) didn't get us into this mess over 8 years, instead of blaming it on the last two years?

Do you consider it personal if one holds the opinion that most people with the above opinions are fools?
 
easycruise said:
Your math skills need improvement.
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I made the mistake of looking at only the first column which showed that personal attribute attack ads were higher for the Republicans than the Democrats in 2008.
 
Dumb All Over said:
And the Dems are not taking advantage of the sleaze ball rule? If not, what's the matter with 'em?
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This is why it's always been an uphill battle for the Dems. They are ethical, their opponents are not. It's like playing sports against another team that doesn't care for the rules.
 
I don't mind ad hom attacks, I just want good ones.

The last one I saw made fun of someone for spending X dollars in stimulus for bike racks.

Why is that horrible/laughable?
 
Seriously, people. What the frack are we going to do about these politikers? One side is a bunch of lying, ad-homming mega-spending neoprogs. The other side is a bunch of ignorant creationist, young-flat-earthers.

Ok, so maybe I exaggerated about the Republicans a bit. I doubt many of them are young-flat-earthers.

What good is it going to do to just keep alternating them in and out of office? OK, so maybe some Democrats lose their jobs this go-round. As soon as the Republicans finish their round of jacking up, the Dems are right back in, having padded their pockets sufficiently to survive the dry spell. Then it's vice-versa. Musical jack-ups.

Shouldn't we at least start threatening them with the guillotine? I don't mean start chopping off heads right away. Give them time to think it over. Have hundreds of thousands of people slowly dragging huge guillotines toward DC. Have some demonstrations with dummies to show how cleanly and humanely the guillotines can lop off heads. The demonstration dummies could be effigies of real politikers. Some of the more unpopular ones.

And when the politikers break out in a cold sweat and finally ask us what it is we want, we tell them to commission a consortium of computer corporations to build a giant supercomputer to run the country, and then fire themselves.

Or else.

But rule by supercomputer should only be a stopgap measure. The final solution will come when a new breed of Human is genetically engineered. Intelligent and altruistic, yet pragmatic, tough, and non-gullible. Uninterested in power except for practical, altruistic purposes. Uninterested in politics. Interested in solutions and progress.

Yeah, more powerful than a locomotive. Faster than a speeding bullet. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

And if these super-Humans can't make human civilization work, then they'll just tear it all down and return the earth and man back to prehistoric times.

Or, we could just keep doing drugs and playing musical politikers. Which ain't good for nuthin, but put a country six feet in the hole.
 
Dumb All Over said:
And the Dems are not taking advantage of the sleaze ball rule? If not, what's the matter with 'em?
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I suspect they are, just not as well this time around the track. Corporate America is awash in cash and the Reps are their traditional cesspool. In 2012 it will be somewhat the other way around. In 2008, they could see the handwriting on the wall and gave to the Dems so they wouldn't be left out in the cold.
 
Speaking entirely of my own experience with local ads this cycle: All the ads I've noticed have been negative (me opponent supports bad thing X) and very little positive (I support good thing Y). For one race all I know, from ads, about both candidates is that they will raise my taxes, they don't try to explain their stances on anything.

I imagine attack ads are more successful, but that's just my guess.
 
Bob Blaylock said:
Seems to me that the second post in this thread does a fairly good job of demonstrating the point of the first post.
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Bob Blaylock said:
In response, the Democrats have nothing. They've been caught—the whole foul lying thieving bunch of them—with their hands in the till, defrauding and stealing from the American people. Their only hope is to portray their Republican rivals as being at least as sleazy as themselves.
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:id:?
 
thaiboxerken said:
This is why it's always been an uphill battle for the Dems. They are ethical, their opponents are not. It's like playing sports against another team that doesn't care for the rules.
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Do you really believe this? In my opinion both parties have their share of good and bad.
 
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