Negative Campaigning Benefits Incumbents

Going negative is risky. Countless polls have shown that voters find negativity distasteful in the extreme, and if a candidate is percieved as going negative, it usually costs him, but of course GW Bush is a creature of his campaign advisors and these advisors are the best that $70 million dollars and the full faith and credit of the GOP establishment can buy and if Bush 2000 has gone negative, there must be solid political logic behind the move. Under the techs' lens, this logic turns out to be indeed solid, even brilliant.

The Shrub's attack leaves McCain with two options. If he chooses not to retaliate, some South Carolina voters will credit McCain for taking the high road, but it could also come off as wimpy and might compromise McCain's image as a tough, take-no-shit guy with the balls to take on the Washington kleptocracy. So McCain pretty much has to strike back the techs agree, but this is extremely dangerous, for by retaliating negatively, McCain runs the risk of looking like just another ambitious win-at-any-cost politician, when, afterall, so much time and effort and money has gone into casting him as the opposite of that.

Plus, the CBS cameraman points out that an even bigger reason why McCain can't afford to let the Shrub, "Pull him down to his level" is that if Bush then turns around and retaliates against the retaliation and so then McCain has to then re-retaliate against Bush's retaliation and so on, then the whole GOP race could quickly degenerate into just the sort of boring, depressing, cynical charge-and-countercharge contest that turns voters off and keeps them away from the polls. And the other techs agree that the really important tactical point here is that John S. McCain cannot afford to have voters get turned off since afterall his whole strategy is based on exciting people and inspiring them and pulling more voters in, especially people who'd stopped voting because they've gotten so disgusted and bored with all the negativity and bullshit of politics.

In other words, this reporter proposes to the techs, it's maybe actually in the Shrub's own political self-interest to let the GOP primary race get ugly and negative and have voters get so bored and cynical and disgusted with the whole thing that they don't even bother to vote.

Well no-shit-Sherlock-H, the ABC techs in essence respond. Good old Frank C then explaining more patiently that, yes, if there's a low voter turnout then the majority of the people who get off their ass and do vote will be the die-hard Republicans, meaning the Christian Right and the party faithful. And these are the groups that vote as they're told, the ones controlled by the GOP establishment, an establishment that has $70 million dollars and 100 percent of its own credibility invested in the Shrub.

A group of CBS techs discuss how going negative in the 2000 Republican primaries benefited Bush because negativity drives away new voters, leaving only the party faithful at the polls to vote for the incumbent.