VaPilot: Cease-fire needed in campaign firefights (OpEd)

[Catchawave]

Cease-fire needed in campaign firefights
The Virginian-Pilot
© August 20, 2006

The coming political season will be far more endurable for everybody if we can begin by acknowledging that any candidate in the running loves America and Americans.

Without exception, candidates want soldiers, police officers, firefighters and teachers taken care of. They want to solve the nation's problems. Nobody who chooses the exhausting, dirty work of getting elected does so because he hates his country or its people.

That obvious truth, though, regularly seems to get buried under a giant pile of overheated rhetoric.

If such talk could be confined to the nation's funhouse - the blogosphere and talk radio - we'd all be better off. But it is threatening again to dominate mainstream politics, with disastrous results for civil conversation.

In the most recent election cycle, senatorial challenger Jim Webb's campaign has been occasionally guilty of the kind of name-calling and nuclear rhetoric that is Sean Hannity's stock in trade. Thankfully, cooler fingers seem to have finally gained control of the campaign's e-mail "send" button.

More recently, Phil Kellam, who wants U.S. Rep. Thelma Drake's seat in Congress, stepped over the line with a reference to his opponent's "hollow patriotism."

Cont'd at: http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=109505&ran=218810

(if a "registration page is prompted" .... scroll down and click "ask me later")

[gratuitous]

1. Uh oh, looks like Democrats might be using a GOP weapon

Better call it out of bounds or off limits, and score any Democratic candidate who scores political points by calling an opponent a hollow patriot or some such. Then, when the Democrats put down the heavy artillery, roll out the GOP cannons and start blazing away around the first part of October.

I've seen this movie a whole bunch of times. I think I'd like to see a different ending, one where the Democrats just keep coming and totally overrun the Republicans.