The Failure Campaign

Listening to the propaganda that passes for information supplied by candidates and/or commentators is always instructive - at least in learning what is being promoted or demoted.

For a few weeks the only GOP ad for US Senate available in East Tennessee was Bob Corker's mom saying he was a good boy. I'm glad he at least got that endorsement as the primary voting approaches. Now they have added two more spots, one where he says he went with a church group to help build houses and another where a group of unidentified Chattanooga residents express their belief that he was the best mayor they ever had.

Oddly absent from TV despite a decent campaign chest is Van Hilleary -- odd because back when the districts were reorganized in the 90s, Hamblen somehow became part of the 4th District and helped get Van into congress. (Now we're back in the 1st District again.) Yet, apart from a few signs on the roadways, there's not much Van Visibility here.
(NOTE: He just started an ad this afternoon - and like the rest of this post shows, he too joins the battle cry against the current GOP's failure to "secure borders", adds that he will stop their deficit spending, and most strangely adds he will "battle Hillary Clinton every step of the way." How lame to continue to try and trade on the Clinton name, which he does twice in this ad. Though I know there are some Conservatives in this town who place her on the Axis of Evil.)

Ed Bryant has started his TV ads recently, and he echoes the comments he made several years back when he appeared on my radio show - chiefly, that his proudest moment as a congressman was presenting the Clinton impeachment papers to the Senate from the House.

There's been so much more presence on the internet, via all their respective campaign blogs. You can read large amounts of nitpicking and name-calling and you can watch their game of King of the Conservative Hill as it happens. I wonder how many average votes bother with any of that? Seems more the playing field for the Already Committed or the Commentators.

I do find it most amusing they all three proclaim they'll secure our borders from terrorists. Doesn't that mean their fellow Conservative GOP office holders have failed at that job?

It isn't a surprise to hear the Democrat challenger for the Senate, Harold Ford Jr, claim that the current officeholders have failed - that's what I expect from the Other Side.

Borders and immigration are definitely The Issue in this county, judging by the late-June rally that brought out a massive armed law enforcement brigade. (Pics and posts here) And all the attention and actions reinforce this belief that the current officeholders are letting bajillions of anti-American immigrants take over from Texas to Canada.

I often read the Volunteer Voters site or Knox Views to keep up with an ever-growing list of who's endorsing who for what, and again, it looks like right now the battlefield is a binary one.

There are so many GOP and Democrat choices in the upcoming primary for the 1st Congressional District, that it is pretty much a county by county kind of race. One Democrat hopeful is current Morristown City Councilman Rick Trent. Since no Dems have held the 1st District since the 1800s, I doubt there will be anything other than a token opposition to whoever wins the GOP race. It's getting name recognition outside of one county that will determine the winner.

Rick writes on his promo flier: "It's not hard to see that our country is going in the wrong direction. Escalating national debt, the Iraq War, high energy costs and the loss of American jobs are just a few of the issues I would like to tackle as your representative in Washington. If you feel like I do, then together we can get America back on track."

On the GOP side, as I said, the most prominent issue in campaign statements is Broken Borders, Broken Borders, and Broken Borders.

So what I'm hearing loud and clear from both parties is it's time to end the Failure of Current Policies. That claim can be a campaign constant no matter the year, or the race, or the location. But admitting Failure within the GOP seems a tactic that the Democrats should be using to their advantage in 2006.

But since polls rate approval of Congress lower than a bug's belly, then that must mean all parties are running on a Anyone Would Be Better Than What We Got bandwagon.