Maine Owl

How Collins will play:


Dirty


Trivial/disingenuous/straw-man attack

Nothing wrong with this...


Except it's not strong enough and doesn't say Collins helped start the war

This was the Tom Allen press release this morning:

Dear Eric,

We have high standards for Senators from Maine, and we have high standards when it comes to the campaigns that are run here too. That’s why we intend to have a healthy debate on the issues. I believe the people of Maine deserve a debate on the important issues facing Maine.

This race is already one of the most closely watched across the nation. And the level of interest by third party groups looms large.

By law, my campaign staff and I are prohibited from having any contact with these third party groups, so we cannot go to them directly with the request I am making of them publicly:

• If you plan to attack Senator Collins – don’t. That won’t help your cause and it has no place in the conversation I intend to have with the voters of Maine.
• If you want to help bring change to Maine and America, stick to the issues and talk about my record and my plans to solve our problems.
• If you plan to run advertisements in Maine about this race, do it positively and factually.

Our campaign has no place for the politics of personal destruction, and we will publicly denounce any negative radio or television advertisement by a third party mentioning my opponent by name or referencing her.

I believe there is too much at stake to allow this race to be undermined by third party groups using negative personal attacks on Susan Collins or me.

My sincere hope is that all third parties – those who favor Susan Collins and those who favor me – will limit their television and radio advertising to positive messages about their favorite candidate.

I respect Susan Collins, and I know she cares about Maine. But Susan Collins and I have fundamentally different views on the most important issues facing this country today -- on economic policy, on our policy in Iraq, on health care and on energy policy. I look forward to a vigorous debate on those and other issues that matter to the people of Maine.

Susan Collins and I see this world differently and in the last 12 years have made very different choices for Maine. The voters of Maine deserve an honest discussion about these differences, and about our competing visions for our country and our state. We cannot allow third party groups to poison this important debate.

I sincerely hope that Susan Collins will join us in a substantive conversation and agree with me that negative ads from third parties attacking either of us have no place in this debate. I hope that Susan Collins agrees to the rules we have adopted.

Thank you for all that you do. Remember, together we can change the direction of Maine and America.

Sincerley,
Tom

I'm not against the notion that the campaign should be respectful. For example, the Collins ad attacking Tom Allen for being supported by moveon.org that slimed the peace movement in the process is my definition of a dirty campaign that should be avoided. But with this declaration, Tom opens himself to charges of hypocrisy on any sort of sharp and direct criticism of Collin's record that he or anyone else might make. There will never be enough opening to deconstruct Collin's obfuscations of her role as a player in the Bush/Republican agenda. The campaign will rapidly devolve into trivialities about highly questionable small business ratings and voting record perfection. Collins will be free to perform mockery of Tom Allen in the manner suggested above, but Tom won't be able to touch her in any hard-hitting way on the war, like is done in the pretty strong anti-war ad above. This statement is a bad idea.