Judging by the reaction of the Healey campaign, demanding apologies and accusing the Patrick campaign of making accusations, it appears that the only person who didn’t quite behave predicably is Deval. If Healey had actually listened to what Deval said she would know that he DIDN’T accuse her of setting this up. What he did say is exactly this:
Well, my message to the Healey campaign is that I will not let you run from your record any longer. You can try all you want to change the subject and shift the blame, but we are going to expose for all just how your failed policies and your failed politics are the reason so many people are stuck and struggling and losing hope. The garbage peddlers who shopped this story around town are part of that failed politics, too.
We are going to ask the people to choose whether the politics of fear, division and personal destruction is what they want or whether were better than that and are ready to finally throw out those who dump this trash in the public square.
In The Globe, Gov. Michael Dukakis offers up some insight into today’s form of Republican smear & fear style politics and specifically Kerry Healey’s campaign:
Former governor Michael S. Dukakis said yesterday that the current attacks on Patrick are even more virulent than those generated during his 1988 presidential campaign, when Republican-sponsored ads criticized him for allowing the release of convicted murderer Willie Horton.
“This is an awful campaign,” Dukakis told the transportation group MoveMass yesterday. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It makes Willie Horton look mild by comparison.”
How much more of this is Massachusetts and America going to allow? This brand of blood sport is thriving on the national level hemorrhaging our nation, in both the real and figurative sense. And it’s all against our best interest and with our permission, if that’s even fathomable. C’mon Massachusetts! You’re in very good company. Just don’t get fooled again. Wake up to what’s going on here and let’s demand change in policy AND politics before the season’s over.
See you on The Boston Common Sunday at 2:30.
Halloween and politics actually go together quite well!
My bad.
how plainly obvious it all is.
Great post. I was hemming and hawing about Sunday’s event until I saw the story about Deval Patrick’s sister and brother-in-law on Friday in the Herald. Now I am definitely going. In fact, anyone who has had enough of fear and smear campaign tactics should attend the rally, even if they are still undecided. We need to demand that the candidates focus on the issues. It is our own fault that fear and smear campaign tactics are used because they have worked in the past, and we need to say enough!
The Globe contends they did not run the story because it had “no relevance to Patrick’s record or qualifications”. OK, that makes sense.
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But if that is the case, why research the information from the document that was provided anonymously when they felt the outcome would have no relevance?
Most likely, the Globe reporter called the registry (apparently along with the Patrick campaign) to get all the facts he or she could before taking the story to an editor. The editors would then decide whether the story is relevant. They made a good decision. Not their fault that they triggered a letter to someone who should have registered in the first place.
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The Herald, on the other hand, has no excuse. And whoever tipped off the Globe in the first place? Slime, slime, slime.
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We’d have to know what exactly the ‘anonymous two page’ document stated. Does it make an allegation? Does it try to claim that Deval used his clout to keep his brother-in-law out of the registry? Does it try to say that the initial crime is, perhaps, worse and more recent and that the brother-in-law is ‘on the lam’???
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What makes sense to me is that some form of accusation is in the two pages and the Globe was doing due diligence until if found out it was bogus. The Herald probably did the same due diligence and came to the same conclusion… only using the story of the requirement to register as smear in place of the original accusation…