John Geer on the Web

The Year of Playing Dirtier
    By Michael Grunwald
    The Washington Post

    Friday 27 October 2006

Negative ads get positively surreal.

    Rep. Ron Kind pays for sex!

    Well, that's what the Republican challenger for his Wisconsin congressional seat, Paul R. Nelson, claims in new ads, the ones with "XXX" stamped across Kind's face.

    It turns out that Kind - along with more than 200 of his fellow hedonists in the House - opposed an unsuccessful effort to stop the National Institutes of Health from pursuing peer-reviewed sex studies. According to Nelson's ads, the Democrat also wants to "let illegal aliens burn the American flag" and "allow convicted child molesters to enter this country."

    To Nelson, that doesn't even qualify as negative campaigning.

    "Negative campaigning is vicious personal attacks," he said in an interview. "This isn't personal at all."... more