First, I want to thank Stephen Daugherty for his earlier diary, which provided the impetus for this very brief diary.
In his diary, he points out how Bush & Company used scare tactics to motivate voters in the 2004 election. This, of course, wasn't the first time Republicans - or a Bush - used fear to motivate voters to vote or not vote for someone. Bush Sr. had his Willie Horton to scare people away from Michael Dukakis.
It's a tactic not unknown to Democrats as well. I remember LBJ's TV ad against Goldwater showing a pretty little girl pulling petals from a daisy (as in "he loves me, he loves me not") while a timer counts down to a A-bomb explosion.
Now, it looks like supporters of the President's re-e-lec-tion are trying to scare voters into voting for Obama by arguing that if you don't vote for Obama an insane, right-wing Republican will win. While that may be true, isn't that also voting out of fear?
What will be more interesting is whether Obama uses this scare tactic too. He's likely not to be so blunt about it, but if he's setting himself up as the reasonable one against the unreasonable ones, then in effect it's still scaring you into voting for him. What else could he run on?
In 2008, it was "Hope and Change." Perhaps in 2012, it will be "Fear and Loathing." Where's Hunter when you need him?