Republicans Have Gone Dangerously Negative

Republicans have gone insanely negative this year, on the theory that “in an election, a solid ‘no’ usually beats an uneasy ‘yes, but,’” writes EJ Dionne of the Washington Post. Democrats, after all, used the same principle to win big in 2006 and 2008, telling their supporters to say “no” to Bush. So branding the Republicans as the “party of no,” won’t work. What will work is a resounding “no” of their own to “rise of an angry, irrational extremism” in the Republican party.

“The principled case that must be made is that the brand of conservatism seeking power this year is irresponsible, incoherent and untrue to the best of its own traditions,” Dionne writes. When Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert asserts—with no proof at all—that terrorists are giving birth to “terror babies” in America in order to gain US passports for use in future plots, “have we not crossed into never-never land?” This election has to be about “whether a movement that’s gone over a cliff will be rewarded for doing so.” (More Republican stories.)