Get ready for a nasty campaign

“Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign companies — to spend without limit in our elections.” — President Barack Obama during his 2010 State of the Union address.

The Republican presidential primary campaign has given us our first glimpse of the new political realities since the Supreme Court's ruling in the Citizen's United case, and it ain't pretty.

The low point thus far has been a truly vile video ad released last week alleging that former Utah governor and U.S. ambassador to China Jon Huntsman is really a secret foreign operative working to bring down the U.S. government. And how do we know this? Because Huntsman and his wife Mary Kaye adopted two orphans, Gracie Mei from China and Asha Bharati from India, bringing them from a life of hopeless desperation and squalor and into a loving home.

The video has all we've come to expect from sleazy attack ads: ominous, foreign-sounding music; fuzzy, stark-colored images; suggestive titles such as "The Manchurian Candidate," and Huntsman speaking in Mandarin (or, perhaps Cantonese?). The kicker is a photo of Huntsman lovingly holding Asha Bharati, both with the traditional bindi, or red dot, on their foreheads.

The ad was put out by a group calling itself NHLibert4Paul, and it ends by urging voters to elect Ron Paul. The Paul campaign called the video "disgusting" and insisted it had nothing to do with it.
And I believe them. But Citizen's United has made it much more difficult for voters to know who is responsible for this kind of sleaze.

By law, ads produced by the candidates are required to end with the tagline, "I'm Billy Babykisser, and I approve this message." That forces a candidate to take ownership of the message, and risk blowback if the ad crosses the line. But now, each campaign has its own super PAC, with no such requirement.

The super PACs are also different from campaigns in that they are not constrained by campaign finance laws that restrict how much any individual, corporation or union can donate to any one campaign during an election cycle.

There are some rules (wink, wink, nod, nod). The organizers of the Super PACs, who are usually former campaign managers or close associates of the candidates, aren't allowed to coordinate with the campaigns. But really, not much coordination is needed. They're all operating from the same playbook.

The campaigns run happy, sunny ads with American flags waving in a clear, blue sky; amber waves of grain swaying in the breeze; and smiling, casually clad candidates pronouncing their undying love for family and country.

Meanwhile, super PACs with all-American names like Restore Our Future (Mitt Romney) or Make Us Great Again (Rick Perry) do all the mudslinging. And if an ad ever goes too far, candidate Babykisser can deny any involvement.

"Heck, I'd go to jail if I had anything to do with the super PAC," Babykisser would insist.
Restore Our Future spent more than $4 million in Iowa, most all of it on attack ads against Newt Gingrich. And for anybody who thinks negative ads don't work, all you have to do is look at where Gingrich was in the polls a month or so ago, and where he is today.

The scary part is we're barely out of the starting blocks. All we've had thus far is Republicans vs. Republicans. The conventions aren't until August and September. The election isn't until November. The super PACs will spend millions between now and then trying to convince you that the fine men vying to be leader of the free world aren't fit to pick up your garbage.

Walter Rubel has been a newsman for more than 25 years and is managing editor of the Sun-News. He can be reached at wrubel@lcsun-news.com.