Once again the Republicans are stealing our hope by cynically reframing the election debates not around issues but by setting forth an unqualified female candidate to distract us from what really matters. I know, an unqualified, fundamentalist woman a heartbeat away from the presidency is scary, but so is our national debt, the Iraq war, global warming, lack of medical coverage for millions. I suggest its past time to focus on the issues and stop allowing the Republicans to turn the election into a high school popularity contest.
The hope that buoyed millions of voters during the Democratic primaries and convention seems to have been dissipated, leaving me with a sad sense of history revisited. Republicans have deliberately and effectively moved the spotlight from a rational discussion of national issues to a calculation of the babe factor and the overwhelming fear for many that an old white man and an untutored loose cannon may be elected to the White House. Oh, wait, isn’t that what we’ve had for the last eight years?
Republicans have proven extremely effective at covering problems by accusing the accuser, manipulating the media and voting machines and the use of smoke and mirrors to ignore or deny problems exist. It is up to every citizen to demand a return to a discussion of the issues, and one way to do that is to request our media cover the issues, including exposing Palin’s lies and half-truths, gender be damned. Open coverage and debate of the issues will show who’s truly “qualified to lead.”
I am reclaiming my hope by working for and expecting positive change, and I hope you will join me in contacting media outlets asking them to focus on the issues—both sides of them—in full. Until readers and viewers show they’re tired of the obfuscation and purposeful titillation, we aren’t going to get much else. And the hope that buoyed millions will get buried in the muck. It’s up to us.
— L.A. Peters
Asheville
“Republicans have proven extremely effective at covering problems by accusing the accuser, manipulating the media and voting machines and the use of smoke and mirrors to ignore or deny problems exist. It is up to every citizen to demand a return to a discussion of the issues, and one way to do that is to request our media cover the issues, including exposing Palin’s lies and half-truths, gender be damned. Open coverage and debate of the issues will show who’s truly “qualified to lead.”
You are dead on correct here. However, it seems to me that the ability of Republicans to replicate their smoke-and-mirrors slight of hand is much less potent this time around. While the nutcase ‘base’ oohs and ahhs over the embarrassing Palin, the rest of the country is starting to clearly see what a cheap ploy this selection was, and was a dingbat she is. And that includes more and more Republicans.
Of course, with the pathetic sight of McCain meandering all over the place, mucking up Congressional efforts at a financial package, trying to claim credit for something he clearly did not do, and his daily reversals of what passes for ‘policies’, the public isn’t buying it.
The stakes are too important, the Republican smear machine less effective and the public too savvy after the last nearly eight years to buy this nonsense. That is why the polls are beginning to show a very large movement to Obama.