Anti-science progressives have no problem invoking a little fear in the heart of the public – sure, conservatives do the same thing, but their scare tactics revolve around money and crime. Progressives claim voting for Republicans will kill you.
Historically, it works. Rachel Carson is famous today despite writing a book that was written to get DDT banned in order to make her fellow environmental 1% types feel better about what they eat; the 800,000 children a year in the third world that died from malaria because she convinced activists anecdotes were evidence (like the lady who sprayed DDT in her basement and was dead 6 months later from cancer) is modeled today in efforts by activists to put warning labels on GMO foods, despite a single instance where any GM organism has caused even an upset tummy. You can insert BPA or fracking or anything else that is propagated with the notion that scientists are stupid and out to kill us all. If there is a bit of anti-science crackpottery to be found, someone on the left is believing it.
Now, President Obama is using the Rachel Carson playbook to claim Mitt Romney causes cancer. Want to get cancer? Vote Republican!
Clearly the kid gloves are off. When President Obama lied about accepting the public financing limit Sen. John McCain was stuck with in 2008, allowing him to raise and spend twice as much as McCain (more than Bush and Kerry spent combined in 2004) money was not a factor, his campaign said – now he says it is, he is worried that Romney will somehow buy the election by having a level playing field in 2012. It isn’t resonating with the public, but maybe claiming that something that happened to a company that an investment firm did something to after he left somehow results in a woman dying of cancer almost a decade later.
If that is a reasonable argument to you, I know how you vote. Here is the SuperPAC ad in question:
The Obama campaign says it has nothing to do with this misleading ad saying Romney gave a woman cancer, it was just their SuperPAC.
We’ll see if the Obama campaign agrees SuperPACs can say anything when a Romney one starts asking for the president’s quarantined Columbia college records.