Archive | November 3, 2010

With Enemies Like These, Who Needs Friends?

Amusingly, Democrats in several states have apparently been running fake attack ads against Libertarian candidates that describe them in terms designed to appeal to Tea-Party-style Republicans so as to split the Republican vote. Here are a couple of samples (click on them to enlarge):

fake attack ad

another fake attack ad

I call this such ads “fake” attack ads because although the Democrats do disagree with the positions they ascribe to the Libertarian candidate, the goal of the ad is to increase rather than to decrease support for that candidate. (Notice that the ad never identifies its target as Libertarian, thus preventing anyone from wondering “why are the Democrats wasting money attacking a third-party candidate with low poll numbers?” They’re also counting on people not wondering “why would the Democrats use ‘outsider’ as a pejorative term when most voters identify positively with it?” or “why are they surrounding the person they’re attacking with flags and American Revolution imagery?”)

In other news, I see that I am, at the moment, the first name mentioned in the Wikipedia article on libertarianism!


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