Prometheus 6

It would be tempting to say that America's vote was a rejection of fear-based politics. But maybe these days, the real question in politics is whom you fear most.

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Playing the politics of fear
By Cathy Young | November 13, 2006

AS SOMEONE who has voted Republican more often than Democratic, I knew I wanted the Republicans to take a beating at the polls when I saw an ad best summed up as "Vote Republican or die in a nuclear conflagration." After showing quotes from Al Qaeda terrorists about seeking nuclear weapons to the accompaniment of a ticking timer, the ad proclaimed, "These are the stakes. Vote November 7th."

Scare tactics are nothing new in politics. That ad, put out by the Republican National Committee, echoes one of the most ignoble political attacks in US history, run against a conservative Republican in 1964: The ad that showed a girl picking petals off a daisy in a countdown to a nuclear explosion, with the implication that the hawkish Barry Goldwater would unleash nuclear war. In more recent campaigns, politicians right and left have appealed to fear of crime and fear of Social Security reform that would supposedly rob old people blind.

In the 2006 elections, the Republicans' tactics have been especially blatant. Besides the nuclear terrorism ad, there was the one from the conservative group Citizens United: A dramatized conversation between two shadowy terrorists is interrupted and the screen goes blank as a voice over intones, "This terrorist wiretap has been disconnected by a Democratic-controlled Congress. If the Democrats win, the NSA won't be able to listen as terrorists plot to attack. This year, vote like your life depends on it. Because it does."

Some conservatives dismiss complaints about fear tactics. "Reminding Americans of the ever-present dangers of jihad is resorting to 'utter fear?' " scoffs blogger Michelle Malkin . But even aside from the loaded question of whether the threat has been exaggerated at times, flogging it for politics is disgraceful. Particularly so since the Democrats -- and the Republican critics of the administration's surveillance program -- don't want to stop wiretaps, only to ensure that they are authorized by the special courts legally required to oversee such spying.