Poison Politics

MoveOn.org has been asking its readers to come up with 30-second ads attacking President Bush. Considering the MoveOn.org crowd, it was probably inevitable that some jackass would try comparing him to Hitler – and it didn’t take long for just that to happen.

Not only is the RNC decrying such cheap and sleezy tactics, but even the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Weisenthal Center have called the ad disgusting and completely inappropriate.

To MoveOn.org, I say this:

Bring it on.

There’s a reason why I say this, because MoveOn.org is going to be one of the biggest reasons that Bush wins in 2004. If this ad were thrown on television it would produce a major swing towards Bush. It’s so incredibly disgusting that it simply reaks of desperation. Such a horrendously dirty campaign trick would alienate voters in such a way that MoveOn would singlehandedly shoot the Democrats in the foot. I’ve not yet seen any Democrats directly disavow the ad. They had better – and fast. This sort of thing is political poison for the Democrats.

MoveOn.org was founded by Zach Exley, a man who is the very definition of "jackass". Before he became the conduit for the angry left he spend his time making pictures of Bush looking like a chimp or drawing Hitler mustaches on him. It’s that same kind of fourth-grade vindictiveness that runs MoveOn.org. It’s an organization based on taking the cheapest shots and showing how angry they are at the President.

For the Democrats, such displays of blind partisanship are political poison. If MoveOn.org is allowed to set the tone in this race it will ensure massively low turnout for moderate Democrats and inflame Republican turnout to record levels. Nobody likes a jackass, and MoveOn.org is a confederation of jackasses.

UPDATE: Jack Rosen of the American Jewish Congress had this to say in today’s Wall Street Journal:

“MoveOn.org informed potential ad makers that ‘we’re not going to post anything that would be inappropriate for television.’ Two of the ads posted on the group’s Web site compared Adolf Hitler to George W. Bush. One ad morphed an image of Hitler into President Bush and says that, ‘1945’s war crimes’ are ‘2003’s foreign policy.'” Rosen says MoveOn.org is “using the memory of that genocide as a political prop. Their comparison diminishes the reality of what happened, and their actions cheapen the memory of a horrific crime. It also does a terrible disservice to this country at a perilous time, when we need to examine the dangers we face with clarity and purpose.” Leadership is “about confronting threats to freedom everywhere. President Bush has shown that leadership in Iraq, and our troops have liberated a people who were oppressed by another murderous dictator. MoveOn.org compares this liberation to the Holocaust. It deploys a picture of Hitler to vilify President Bush. Comparing the commander-in-chief of a democratic nation to the murderous tyrant Hitler is not only historically specious, it is morally outrageous. Comparing an American president, any American president, to Hitler is an outrage. The MoveOn.org ad was inexcusable. Political figures such as Al Gore, who have associated themselves with MoveOn.org, have a special responsibility to condemn these ads; donors to the group such as George Soros have the same responsibility. They owe it not just to the memory of the millions who died in the Holocaust. They owe it also as a simple matter of decency.”