DAYTONA BEACH SHORES -- Having learned in South Carolina that attack ads work, the two leading Republican candidates have been tearing at one another nonstop for days.In the process they are leaving pieces of each other scattered all over the political landscape.
This vicious internal conflict in a party which should be united, and must be united if it is to have a hope of defeating the Democrats in November, is the source of unending mirth and more than a little political optimism amongst their opponents on the Left. A couple of days ago, I ate at a seafood restaurant owned by a good friend whose primary fault in life is that he is a liberal.
When I came in, he was chatting with one of his liberal friends about an uncovered tub full of squirming live crabs over on one side of the room. “How is it,” asked the visitor, “that the crabs aren’t getting out of the tub? They are within an inch or two of the edge and could easily climb out.” “They can’t,” responded the owner. “These are all Republican crabs and the moment that any one of them gets near the top the others all pull him back down.”
“Well,” the first liberal concluded, “I guess they don’t realize that no matter how hard they fight against one another, sooner or later we are going to eat them all.”
Far be it from me to agree with a liberal on much of anything, but these two were onto something.
These days, Ronald Reagan’s famous dictum that “Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican” seems to have receded into mythological status from some golden age. Now GOP candidates vie with one another to see who can provide the best fodder for Democratic attack ads during the coming general election.
Indeed, if any of you like seeing the repeated criticisms of Republican candidates blaring forth from the television day after day, then lean back and enjoy, because Obama and his supporters will spoon feed these things to all of us as soon as a Republican nominee is chosen. Sooner if one of them is seen as the probable winner.
If the GOP is to win against Obama, they must focus the debate on the President’s record: his serial broken promises, the many ways in which he has made a very bad economic situation much much worse, his undying efforts to further divide a nation which yearns for unity and recovery and his successful efforts to weaken the United States and to project that weakness as a core element of his foreign policy.
Instead all four men seem determined to do a great deal of Obama’s propaganda work for him. It’s too late to do anything about the political climate in Florida.
What is done here is done, but it needs to stop now.
Perhaps all who remain in the race after Florida could take to heart Rick Santorum’s call during the Jacksonville debate for the rivals to drop the personal attacks and focus on the issues. As a practical matter this should not be a difficult task as the next three contests seem to favor Romney pretty heavily and tough attack ads will likely produce little benefit.
Nevada has a large Mormon minority. Romney’s father was a popular governor of Michigan where dissatisfaction with the current government runs high because of the lousy state economy. And Maine is thought to favor Romney for many of the same reasons that New Hampshire did.
Here in Florida it seems to me that the mutual attack ads have pretty much cancelled each other out. More and more, I hear loyal solid Republicans crying out for an end to this self-destruction and a shift to the need to defeat Obama and to stress on the steps needed to resurrect the economy, create jobs and reverse Obama’s outrages.
The candidates all claim that the most important thing they do is listen to the voice of the people. Let them hear our voice on this -- enough already!
Obama is the enemy, not your fellow Republicans. Work together. Defeat the Dems. Save our country!
