Slinging sleaze at Kerry

Remember how I said the Republican dirt-slinging against John Kerry was in full swing?

I won't even mention the sources of the latest. Anyone who reads blogs will encounter it soon enough.

It won't stop as long as he's a Presidential candidate or a sitting President. It's just the way Republicans practice politics these days. Al Gore had a good description of the reason in the speech to which I linked before:

Somewhere along the line, the Republican Party became merely the nameplate for the radical right in this country.

The radical right is, in fact, a coalition of those who fear other Americans: as agents of treason, as agents of confiscatory government, as agents of immorality.

This fear gives the modern Republican Party its well-noted cohesiveness and its equally well-noted practice of jugular politics.

Even in power, the modern Republican Party feels itself to be surrounded by hostility: beginning with government itself, which they present as an enemy; extending to those in the opposition party; and ultimately, on to that portion of the country whose views and hopes are represented by it -- that is to say, to virtually half the nation.

Under these circumstances, it is natural -- perhaps tragic in the classical sense -- but nonetheless natural -- for the modern Republican Party to be especially proficient in the use of fear as a technique for obtaining and holding power.

This phenomenon was clear under both Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr., except softened to an extent by the personalities of both men.

Under our current President Bush, however, the machinery of fear is right out in the open, operating at full throttle.

The politics of fear and hostility produces the politics of pesonal destruction. It's become the modus operandi of today's Republican Party.