Originally posted by: Rainsford
Originally posted by: FuzzyBee
Originally posted by: Rainsford
Originally posted by: FuzzyBee
Originally posted by: Rainsford
Originally posted by: FuzzyBee
Originally posted by: conjur
Now the GOP is calling minorities in Tennessee and telling them, via more robocalls, that if they voted for Ford in the Primary, they don't have to vote for him again!!!
http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_96098.asp
There are reports out of Nashville that African Americans are getting phone calls telling them if they voted for Harold Ford Jr. in the August primary, they don't need to vote for him again now.
According to media reports from Nashville, volunteers driving senior citizens to the polls for early voting have had their voters tell them they'd received these calls.
Can you believe that?
Do Republicans think African Americans are stupid? In 2004, Nashville's African Americans were called and told to vote on Wednesday, not Tuesday. The racist GOP thinks black voters are too stupid to know the difference beteween a primary and an election. They think the African American community doesn't know how to vote.
Hmm. In that opinion piece, I saw no evidence that it was the Republicans doing this. Could it not be the Democrats doing it to place the blame on the Republicans? Or are they too slow to come up with such a plan?
Uh, that's not a very good plan. Far more people are going to hear about these calls than they will hear about who actually made them. If it IS some sort of convoluted Democrat plan to blame the Republicans, it's not very well thought out and will almost certainly hurt more than it will help. Hmm, so come to think of it, maybe it IS the Democrats...poorly thought out plans that hurt their chances in the election is really their MO.
In all seriousness, you aren't really THAT naive, are you?
Nice. You have a well-thought-out paragraph, and follow it with a personal jab. I guess, though, that there is no plausibility in my idea, because you think I'm "naive".
That's not a personal jab, it's a question of your thoughts on the topic. My comment indicated that I thought your idea was far fetched, and I followed that up by asking if you were credulous enough to believe such an obviously silly idea.
It really is? There's a difference between calling somebody's idea "fa fetched" and saking what the level of their naivety is. If you don't understand that difference, you shouldn't be using the term. If you dom then your sole intent was to insult and attempt to demean.
But I will note that you seem to have no follow-up to my "well-thought-out paragraph". Hmm...perhaps whining is easier than actually defending your position.
There's no follow-up because of the personal jab you added at the end.
Gee, it'd be nice to be able to discuss things in a civil tone, but this obviously isn't the place for it. Apparently, the majority of the posters here seem to believe that they are more intelligent than everyone else, but the only way they can seem to get their feelings across is with insults and "clever" cliched nicknames.
Perhaps if you can rethink your question and poise it without questioning my "naivety", I'll discuss it with you; until then, I guess I can count you as part of the aforementioned majority.
Have a good one!
Sorry, really. I suppose posting here as often as I do has sort of made this seem like the thing to do. Still, no excuse, and we really do need more actual civil discourse here.
So, here's my question phrased in a way I would do it if we were talking in person (a good rule of thumb for P&N, actually). Does the idea of Democrats faking Republicans faking Democrats saying stupid things really seem like a good election strategy? Obviously politics is a pretty sneaky business, so I wouldn't put it past anyone if they thought it was effective...but I wonder how effective such a strategy would really be. The "fake phonecalls" will almost certainly reach more people than the news of who made (or allegedly made) those phone calls, in order for the strategy to work, voters would have to quickly be informed about what was "really" going on...I just don't see enough people finding out that quickly. If the Democrats faked this whole thing to make a big stink, the stink they are making is not big enough to counteract the negative effects of the calls quickly enough. The only way this would work is if the Dems were counting on people ALREADY being aware of this type of scam and having a negative reaction to the phone calls when they got them, assuming it was Republican dirty tricks. But this seems to be taking an awful lot of voter awareness on faith, I have met relatively few people who heard of the fake phone calls from the last election...if *I* was the Dems I wouldn't have bet on this working.
I compare this to the idea that the Republicans did it to make the Dems look stupid. That is a lot more straight forward, and it relies on voters being UNinformed instead of informed, something that seems a much safer bet. It also fits a pattern, the 2004 elections saw something similar that seemed to be effective for the Republicans and had very little in the way of negative results. If I was them, I might try it again.
It's not that the concept of the Dems doing it seems far fetched so much as the concept of the Republicans doing it seems more likely. Obviously no amount of guesswork makes up for having the actual facts of who did what, but the idea that the Dems are behind this just doesn't pass the sniff test...especially when the alternative makes a lot more sense. If the bulk of voters were made up of well informed internet posters, I'd say it would be a good strategy for the Dems...but given the actual makeup of the electorate, it makes way more sense that the Republicans would do it unless the Dems are complete morons when it comes to elections (so, like I said, not totally outside the realm of possibility
).
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