Unhinged

It's shaping up to be the ugliest campaign season I've ever seen.

The ongoing dirty tricks campaign against Michael Steele in Maryland continues. He's endured racial slandering from his opponents, Senator Schumer's staff got caught illegally stealing his credit report, campaign activists trail him everywhere and film everything he says and does, trying to splice together misleading footage to discredit him, and the latest case the Dem hit team was filming him trying to offer private condolence to parents of a soldier killed in Iraq.

Then there's an ugly attack ad against JD Hayworth in Arizona. Bad enough it smeared him with a lie about ties to Abramoff. That's a reality of politics these days. But it also ran a picture of his head centered in crosshairs of a rifle scope. Unbelievable.

Even locally, today Baron Hill announced that Mike Sodrel should return money from the Republican National Campaign Committee because of the Foley mess. What a sad and disgusting example of political opportunism.

What ever happened to campaigning on issues? Why can't Hayworth's opponent simply say that JD's a supporter of the war in Iraq and a leader on Border security, among other positions he opposes? Could it be because he can't win on the issues?

What else can Baron Hill do? The reality is that when you get into an actual issues discussion, Baron comes pretty close to Mike on most of them. And where he doesn't agree, he probably doesn't want to mention it because his stance is opposite of the voters.

OK, now tell me that both sides use dirty tricks in campaigning. Maybe so. But so far I haven't seen any from the Republicans. Of course, the real campaign is only beginning; just wait until the TV and radio ads come in full force.

Tell you what. As soon as I see a Republican ad that's unfairly trashing the Democrat, I'll post it.