Rhode Island

The GOP Senate primary in Rhode Island has taken a nasty turn with one of those untraceable sort of groups that pop up every election year and miraculously have loads of money to spend targeting candidates with negative media. The organization, "Common Sense 2006" is responsible for a push poll asking voters if they will support Lincoln Chafee as a pro-choice candidate. If they say yes they are then treated to a graphic description of an abortion, called baby killers and unpatirotic.

These are the tactics of the radical right. This is how they campaign and this is how they govern. No one who has paid attention to politics for the last 30 years is surprised. What is surprising, is that these tactics still work, that the mainstream media remains inept at exposing them, and that the media seems "shocked" when the same things happen every two years in different races, with different groups around the country. Reporting them as "dirty tricks" only reinforces the message that sponsors want to send: politics is dirty.