The people running the Healey campaign may be many things, but they’re not stupid. Whoever dug this story up and sent the anonymous letter to the papers will be far enough removed from the campaign that Healey will be able to maintain her indignant denials. It’s a play right out of the Karl Rove playbook. But even if someone else did this on their own, Kerry Healey still bears responsibility because her campaign has made it clear by their own actions that lies, distortions, and personal attacks rather than reasoned debate on the issues are the campaign strategy of choice. The ironic thing is that even if Healey’s hands are clean in this matter, no one’s going to believe her because they’ve heard nothing but negativity from her for the past month.
I know a lot of contributors to this site have been criticizing Deval over the past couple weeks because they wanted him to respond to Healey’s attacks by going negative on her. Personally, I was glad he stuck to his convictions that campaigns should be run on issues and not personal attacks. I hope, now that he’s decided he needs to respond to this latest outrage, that we’re at least able to focus our attacks on Healey’s record and leave the personal issues out.
…I always felt there was ample subject matter with regards to Healey’s record (or lack there of) to focus attacks there. It is a shame that the personal attacks on Deval and his family had to come this far before people realized Deval needed to respond.
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As the tired cliche goes, “we’ve seen this movie before”. Tired, but very true.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Kitchen Sink Strategy was in the works for a while and JW was just waiting for the perfect moment to launch it. Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.
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p> – Dan