...which, given their voting machines, is probably an impossible dream these days anyway.
So keep it up until they develop facial tics and their hair falls out, their families suffer nervous breakdowns, their creditors call in their notes, their friends shun them, their church kicks them out, the police round them up on morals charges, they're convicted on all counts and they're doing 10 to life at Leavenworth and sharing a cell with some giant, shave-headed weight lifter named Bruno. That's not nearly enough to atone for all their sins, but it's a start.
And yes, after watching the massive damage inflicted on this country and the rest of the world by BushCo and its GOP loyalists, acting on behalf of their employers in corporate America, the ends do in fact justify the means. The people who think that ends can never, ever justify means are, imo, the very people who would have written letters to the editor deploring the "terrorist tactics" used at the Boston Tea Party and supporting British colonial monetary and taxation policies.
Do we become them by engaging in GOP-like tactics? No. We become the people who can finally win elections again. I can't think of a gutter too low or a scheme too malicious if it has the end result of removing another republican hand from the levers of power.
Are progressives too pure to use Flynt-style measures? Then we're too pure to run this country in this century and we might just as well admit it and save ourselves a ton of frustration and misery.
There's plenty of time play "what if" morality games once these madmen are safely out of the way. For now, let it rip and I'll gladly deal with any ethical consequences.
So flame away, would-be occupiers of the moral high ground. Just don't forget that your tax money pays for torture, among hundreds of other BushCo outrages, that should guarantee the whole lot of them multiple life sentences deep in the American gulag.
wp
Edited to add: Maybe we could require that they dress like NASCAR drivers, with the logos of their top 20 corporate "donors" plastered all over their clothing. Maybe that could replace negative campaigning simply by showing the truth about their agendas right where everyone can see it.
So when, say, Obama claims to be a man of the people and you can see that he's actually the
darling of Wall Street because he's wearing the logos of Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Citadel Investment Group, UBS AG, UBS Americas, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse Group -- well, who needs to attack him on phony grounds when he wears his vulnerability right on his sleeve -- and everywhere else.