Joe Klein notes that negative campaign ads “have been more effective and brutal this time because no one has to get up there at the end and say, ‘I’m Mitt Romney and I approved this message.'”
“That line came in for a fair amount of mockery when the federal government began to require it a few cycles ago. But it worked. It became harder to for a candidate to have an ad accusing an opponent of being a mother-raper if he or she had to appear at the end and say, ‘I approve this message.’…”
“This time, however, the vast majority of Iowans don’t know that friends of Mitt Romney have put several bajillion dollars worth of ads up eviscerating Newt Gingrich… It’s a coarsening of a system that is already too coarse. And we can thank the Supreme Court for that. It certainly doesn’t bode well for the general election next fall.”
