TheLagerLad wrote:

tennyson wrote:

Do you EVER remember a GOP Primary fight that was as ugly as this one ?? 

http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/16/politics/2016-south-carolina-republican-war/index.html



 

McCain vs Bush in South Carolina in 2000 was really, really bad. Remember how Karl Rove and Ralph Reed were spreading the rumor that McCain has fathered a black child out of wedlock?

Here's a great 2004 Vanity Fair article about that primary

“We were starting to get wind that this was going to be a very different campaign,” she said from her parents’ home in Birmingham, Alabama. “There was this sense that everything was turning negative. People were walking into the office with copies of this particular e-mail and asking us about it.… It was so revolting.”

The “revolting” e-mail—alleging that “McCain chose to sire children without marriage”—was from Richard Hand, a professor of the Bible at Greenville’s Christian-fundamentalist Bob Jones University, Bush’s very first campaign stop, on February 2. With the school’s ban on interracial dating still in effect then, the veteran political reporter Curtis Wilkie told me “he might as well have gone to a goddamned Klan rally” as go to B.J.U.

Bush came under attack for it, mostly from Democrats and commentators. McCain said little. (It wasn’t until nine days after the primary that he declared that the G.O.P. is “the party of Ronald Reagan, not Pat Robertson … the party of Abraham Lincoln, not Bob Jones.”) But Danielle Vinson, an associate professor of political science at Greenville’s Furman University, who studied the primary in depth, told me that what the media didn’t grasp is that “B.J.U. people are very active, very political; they’re a great campaign resource.” As it turned out, Wilkie said, “Bush knew what he was doing going to Bob Jones”—shrewdly “pandering” to the evangelical vote, just as called for in the Reed game plan.

“This whole thing, it was orchestrated by Rove, it was all Bush’s deal.… It was pretty rank,” said Fletcher, “and they had an institution that was peddling all that shit, and it was a university, Bob Jones University. I’m telling you, if there was a campaign headquarters in South Carolina, there it was. Hand was part of it, but Hand wasn’t the only one.”

Mark Carman, who owns the Capitol City News & Maps store, told me of going to a candidates’ debate in Columbia, “and when we got back to our car, there was a flyer under the windshield wiper saying something about McCain having a Negro child. My wife is African-American—she just tore it up.”

State representative Jim Merrill, a political operative in 2000 who’d backed Dan Quayle before moving to McCain, told me, “We caught a couple of kids red-handed putting flyers on cars outside a seniors’ center in Hilton Head. One of the kids said a guy had paid him 50 bucks to do it.” Who was that guy? He had no idea.

Kevin Geddings, a prominent South Carolina Democratic consultant now based in North Carolina, told me someone had faxed him “a kind of cheesy Kinko’s pamphlet” with a photograph of the McCain family. “It was just so obvious,” he said. “It was one of the few shots you’ve ever seen of the McCains that so prominently featured that particular girl.”

That certainly was remarkably bad, but was more of a smear campaign rather than outright back-and-forth in your face nastiness. This current primary for the R-tribe as far as I can remember takes the cake !  

I wonder if it will affect the actual general election once we get to that point. Will the images and accusations prevail in peoples minds ? 

Rongone wrote:

Yeah . . . Old Trussed Ted (AKA Damien) Cruz is going after both his old buddy Trump and young whippersnapper Rubio as to who's more conservative, more Christian, and more experienced. Plus that old liar, liar, pants on fire debate yell fest. It's hard to believe these immature mental midgets are the best the party has to offer.

Believe it ! 

Last edited by tennyson (2/19/2016 5:48 pm)

TheLagerLad wrote:

It's hard to believe these immature mental midgets are the best the party has to offer.

To be honest, Rubio kinda won me back with his town hall appearance the other night.

I mean yes the Republicans really suck. 

I agree, Rubio performed really well at the Town Hall and if I had to choose only one candidate today, I would vote for him.  Kasich comes in 2nd, Bush 3rd and then "None of the above" after that.

Goose wrote:

I'm hoping that Kasich beats expectations and can go on till Ohio.

Why would any self-respecting Republican ever vote for a candidate with a reluctance to criticize opponents, a broad message of neighborliness, as well as compassionate government and problem solving ? 

They would have to be crazy ! 
 

Last edited by tennyson (2/20/2016 11:01 am)