The Swifties were 100% credible. The only person to change his story over-and-over again was Kerry. Everyone knows, Kerry was the dude in the Vietnam movie that got fragged by his troops. Why deny it? Water under the bridge. No-one is defending Bush, even AAA has recognized he has made a f'd up mess of things. The "Bush Doctrine" you refer to, didn't consider the event when most everyone would be against us, including 50% of the US population.
Get real: Ad features vets who claim Kerry "lied" to get Vietnam medals. But other witnesses disagree -- and so do Navy records. ... One of the veterans who says Kerry wasn't under fire was himself awarded a Bronze Star for aiding others "in the face of enemy fire" during the same incident. ... Although the word "Republican" does not appear in the ad, the group's financing is highly partisan. The source of the Swift Boat group's money wasn't known when it first surfaced, but a report filed July 15 with the Internal Revenue Services now shows its initial funding came mainly from a Houston home builder, Bob R. Perry, who has also given millions to the Republican party and Republican candidates, mostly in Texas, including President Bush and Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay ... http://www.factcheck.org/article231.html
I say change the name of GOP to COP... Corrupt Ole Party... Or maybe, PPP ... Protect (the) Pedophiles Party...
I know it is an article of faith among lefties that republicans lie and cheat to win elections and the only reason liberals lose is that voters are just too damn dumb to understand where their own interests lie. But consider that every one of your examples of evil republicans involve campaign ads that focused on either some claim a democrat was making, eg Kerry as war hero, or some action they took, eg Atwater's famous revolving prison door to remind voters that Dukakis had let violent felon Willie Horton out on furlough. If these aren't legitimate targets, I odn't know what is. Compare that to the Democrats. They want to tar the entire Republican party with Foley. No Republican is defending Foley, but it still is unclear to me what Hastert or anybody else was supposed to do beyond what they did. It's not like they were in the military and they could order him around. Let's look at another example, the excretable Virginia Senate race between George Allen and Jim Webb. Hitting Allen with his idiotic "macaca" crack is legitimate, although I marvel that it made the front page of the Post day after day. Sending out proxies to ask about his jewish grandfather is out of bounds, as was the Post reporter calling his mother in a retirement home and grilling her about it. Recycling 30 year old unverifiable claims that Allen used the "n" word are even more detestable. I used to respect Jim Webb, and I feel sorry for him that he has sunk this low.
What you think are lies, I see as facts, and vice versa. You can predict what I'll say so I'll save both of us some time. Allen is an unabashed racist. The "n" word itself is no big deal. But it reflects a pattern. Look at this meeting between him and other racists when he was a governor 10 years ago. Is it relevant. Definitely!
Would you agree that the Republican party has made some very broad generalizations about Democrats being weak on defense and has done it with half truths and gross misrepresentations of the Democratic policy? Both parties a guilty of making these sweeping attacks IMO, especially in an election year.
Clearly the biggest stick in the Republican arsenal is national security, so they are going to use it. I'm not sure what you have in mind when you say they have used half truths and gross misrepresentations. Why would they have to? The fact is Democrats reflexively oppose every program to fight terrorism. They oppose NSA monitoring, they want to close gitmo, they oppose coercive questioning of terrorists, they want to cut and run from Iraq, they oppose the financial data mining,etc. No doubt Republicans generalize. So do Democrats, who accuse Republicans of favoring the rich, starting the Iraq war for Halliburton, stealing any election Democrats lost, planning to terminate Social Security, etc.
I remember back in the old days the Republicans appeal was anti-communism, and the Democrats were always accused of being communist sympathizers. But look at their actions. Kennedy invaded Cuba (and failed), Johnson escalated the Vietnam war (and failed). Nixon cut and run from Vietnam, and sold out Taiwan to Red China! The dog that barks the loudest doesn't bite.
Some Democrats, not all, and I don't think the general idea is to close Gitmo as much as it is to regulate it. Cut and run is the biggest misrepresentation. While I don't agree with redeployment, that in and of itself is not cutting and running. The point I'm trying to make is the Republican party has done an excellent job of lumping the enitre Democratic party into one big ball of loonie lefties. I'll give them credit for the political manuver, but it just isn't true. In the end that kind of broad generalization hurts us all, Republican and Democrat.