As Close Elections Go Down to the Wire, Campaigns Go Negative
To the Point
KCRW
4.4 • 583 Ratings
🗓️ 1 November 2006
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With control of the House and the Senate too close to call, Republicans and Democrats are falling back on an American tradition: negative campaigning. There’s no doubt that it works, but does it have any other redeeming characteristics? Does it increase partisan mistrust that makes it harder to govern? Plus, Israel stage a retaliatory assault in Northern Gaza, and a Turkish intellectual is cleared of insulting Islam with remarks about 5000-year old Sumerian culture.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Support for To The Point comes from subscribers of KCRW Santa Monica and from the Public Radio International Program Fund, whose contributors include the Ford Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. |
| 0:12.7 | Hello again. I'm on only back with To the Point. With control of the House and the Senate too close to call, Republicans and Democrats are falling back on an American tradition, a negative campaigning. |
| 0:22.2 | On to the point, there's no doubt that it works, but does it have any other redeeming characteristics? |
| 0:27.3 | Does it increase partisan mistrust and make it harder to govern after the votes are counted? |
| 0:32.4 | First, this news update, Israeli troops, tanks, and helicopter gunships assault of the northern Gaza Strip today |
| 0:37.5 | to destroy rocket launchers that have struck Israel 300 times this year. Both Palestinian factions |
| 0:44.3 | called the deaths of at least eight people a massacre. Greg Myrie reports from Jerusalem for the |
| 0:49.6 | New York Times. Greg, good to have you back on our program. Thank you, Warren. Was this the |
| 0:53.9 | beginning of what Prime Minister Omerit to Israel, has promised will be an increased |
| 0:58.4 | offensive in Gaza? |
| 1:00.6 | Well, the Israelis are saying not. In fact, Prime Minister Olmer and his security cabinet |
| 1:06.2 | met today to debate that very issue, and their response was, we're not escalating, at least at this time. |
| 1:13.4 | They say they will continue operations in Gaza like they've been doing for the past four months, |
| 1:18.2 | but they're not going to ratcheted it up at this point. That said, today was one of the bigger |
| 1:22.5 | raids or operations that we have seen over the past four months with the Israelis inside Gaza. |
| 1:28.4 | There was a new cabinet member, the ultra-right to politician Avik Dore Lieberman. |
| 1:33.9 | What voice has he had in this discussion? |
| 1:37.7 | Right. He seems to be pushing for a much stronger military response, |
| 1:43.1 | saying that the Israelis really need to hit harder in Gaza and elsewhere, |
| 1:49.7 | and that that's the way to go. However, he was overruled today. The defense minister, |
| 1:53.6 | Amir Peretz, apparently, was sort of the leading voice of restraint, and his voice carried |
| 1:58.2 | the day at least for today. Lieberman is quoted in one place is saying the Israeli army should apply tactics used by the |
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