Electoral sleaze watch

For months I've been saying that the November elections are going to be the dirtiest and sleaziest we've seen in a long time. That's saying something when you're dealing with people who've already (successfully) smeared a triple-amputee veteran by linking him with Osama bin Laden, used a (successful) phone-jamming attack to decrease Democratic voter turnout in New Hampshire, and (successfully) purged thousands of legal voters from the rolls in a number of states. In fact, that's exactly what the GOP is looking for this year.

You may have noticed the article in Sunday's Washington Post which explains that Republicans now believe that their only hope for avoiding electoral catastrophe in November is to put all their resources into hardball personal attacks against Democratic candidates around the country.

And who have they chosen to head up the effort?

According to the Post, that man is none other Terry Nelson.

And who is Terry Nelson?

Nelson has the unique distinction of being tied to two of the biggest cases of Republican campaign corruption in the Bush era. Nelson was implicated in the infamous New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal and he was an unindicted coconspirator in the political money-laundering case which ended Tom DeLay's career.

The Post article is well worth reading. By the Republican party's own admission, the elections are going to be all about mudslinging, not actual issues:

Republicans are planning to spend the vast majority of their sizable financial war chest over the final 60 days of the campaign attacking Democratic House and Senate candidates over personal issues and local controversies, GOP officials said.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, which this year dispatched a half-dozen operatives to comb through tax, court and other records looking for damaging information on Democratic candidates, plans to spend more than 90 percent of its $50 million-plus advertising budget on what officials described as negative ads.