The blogosphere is roiling with discussion of the latest Bush/Cheney '04 web ad. Like Jack Bog, I first watched the video with the sound off, which lead to a somewhat distorted perception of it. Upon review I now see that the clips of Hitler fading into a shot of Bush seemingly giving a Nazi salute are intended to give the viewer the impression that Kerry and his supporters are frothing at the mouth with negativity and therefore aren't ready for prime time.

The problem is that the Hitler clips are lifted from a reader-submitted prospective ad in a contest which moveon.org ran some time ago. Moveon.org never endorsed the ad. Indeed they promptly removed the reader-submitted ad from their servers when, quite rightly, outrage was expressed at the content of the prospective ad. Thus the Bush/Cheney ad insinuates a blatent falsehood - that Presidential candidate Kerry is somehow responsible for what any and every opponent of President Bush says or does. That my friends is classic demagoguery. To accept their premise, one would have to also accept that Bush is just as responsible for the ravings of every white supremacist NeoNazi out there who happens to be socially conservative like Bush... which would be all of them. Does anyone believe for a second that Kerry stands to receive a single vote from American white supremacists? Of course not! Does that make Bush culpable for the ravings of American white supremacists? Of course not!

George Bush, demagoguery is NOT a family value! Nor is it a Christian value.