Super Tuesday/Negative Campaigning Humor

This post will stay at the top through super Tuesday's voting, so please scroll down for Fun Monday and more current posts. Thank you! Borrowed from the Feb 2008 edition of O Magazine, orignally published by GAMING THE VOTE: WHY ELECTIONS AREN'T FAIR (AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT). by William Poundstone.

"Like consultants, negative campaigning is nothing new. In the 1828 presidential race, Andrew Jackson's opponents accused him of cannibalism.

The Whigs claimed that Democrat Martin Van Buren wore the finest ladies' corsets under his suit. He ate off golden utensils and spent a fortune on diamonds, rubies, French vases, and imported beauty creams, all charged to U.S. taxpayers. The 1844 race was enlivened by the interesting claim that Henry Clay had broken every one of the ten commandments. In 1876 the Republicans declared that Democrat Samueal Tilden has syphilis and was an unprincipled drunkard scheming to bring back slavery. Tilden's people then claimed that Hayes had gone insane and shot his mother.

In 1948 Lyndon Johnson, running for the Senate against Coke Stevenson, instructed a campaign worker: 'Go out there and tell 'em Coke was caught having sex with a farm animal.' The worker was aghast. 'But you know that's not true!' 'Of course it's not true. That's not the point. Tell it anyway, and make him deny it.' "

Makes our little back biting nominees seem kind of cordial doesnt it? ;-)