Republican Ads

Considering I just posted about fifteen anti-Bush ads, I thought it would only be fitting to give the other side a little equal time. Does that make me fair and balanced? Oops, can't say that, it's copyrighted (if Bill O'Lie-ly is correct, which he's not).

So here you go, the difference between the ads at MoveOn.org, and a sample of a right-wing organization's ad running in Iowa. The 15 ads hit on facts: 451 dead American soldiers, billions taken from health care, a budget that went from the largest surplus in history to the largest deficit in history in three years. And, of course, the 3.3 million Americans who have lost jobs in Bush's great economy (waiting for the spin, you business majors!) Those are all hard numbers, backed up with facts. You can look them up in newspaper archives. You can probably find them on the Internet, too, but I wouldn't trust anything I read on the Internet.

The right-wing ad, sponsored by a group called Club for Growth, features:

"In the ad by the GOP-leaning Club for Growth, an announcer asks a couple leaving a barber shop, "What do you think of Howard Dean's plans to raise taxes on families by $1,900 a year?"

The man responds: "What do I think? Well, I think Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading ...," and the woman continues, "... body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont where it belongs."

Now, the $1900 number is something they pulled out of the air. Why? Because Dean has promised to repeal Bush's tax cuts, the ones that hosed Social Security and Medicare. The $1900 is a figure based on one tax bracket from the Clinton administration (the time when the budget was at a surplus and 3.3 million more people had jobs). While that would technically expand government - you'll need more paper-pushers to run those programs - the rest is, well, conservatives for you. They ignore hard numbers and facts (3.3 million unemployed, a $1 trillion deficit, and 0 weapons of mass destruction but $20 billion in Haliburton contracts) for "sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show[s]."

Maybe it was all those logic puzzles my mom made me do as a kid, but I'm gonna throw my hat in with the hard numbers and facts, rather than the insults and stereotypes.