Right-wing strategists still stupid after all these years

It's happening again!

Remember the ads about one William Horton in the 1988 campaign? These lie-filled ads claimed Michael Dukakis had allowed Horton, who was serving a life sentence for murder, to go out on furlough. Actually, Dukakis ended the furlough program - which had been implemented by a Republican predecessor.

Now the same right-wing operatives who made those commercials are back. This time they're calling themselves the National Campaign Fund, and they're attacking Barack Obama's vote against expanding the use of the death penalty. Obama's vote didn't scale back capital punishment. It simply failed to expand it. The bill passed without Obama's support but was vetoed - by a Republican governor, no less.

I'm against the death penalty. It's not a deterrent, and there's no doubt that it's carried out unequally. But the real issue here is how sleazy the National Campaign Fund's new ad is. The commercial starts off listing a series of gang-related murders while a scene of a dilapidated neighborhood drifts by. Then it proceeds to blame Obama for these particular killings.

You read that right: The ad acts as if Obama himself pulled the trigger. Isn't that just the most idiotic thing you've ever heard of? For the record, Obama does support the death penalty for some crimes, so all this does is prove that the center of debate has moved so far from the political center that to be an "approved" presidential candidate, you not only have to support capital punishment but also support expanding its use (even though a GOP governor opposed expanding it).

Then the National Campaign Fund proves they really are a bunch of shit-eating control freaks by somehow linking this to the "war on terror."

Eek! I'm scared! Not! Is the National Campaign Fund really just Rudy Giuliani under a pseudonym? I know terrorism is a serious issue, but the Bush cult has had no qualms about exploiting it for political gain.

I don't know exactly how many people fell for the lies that attempted to link Dukakis with Horton (the swiftboating of '88), but I can't imagine too many will fall for the right-wing strategists' latest shrill garbage installment.