Campaigning on the Bodies

The Dems have decided to stretch the bounds of good taste and run an internet ad which features coffins of Iraq war dead. They're not making anybody happy. First, the GOP response:

Republicans are howling over a Democratic political Web site ad that displays flag-draped coffins and a fake police mug shot of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, arguing that the ad politicizes war casualties and is an insult to the families of the troops killed in Iraq.

The 75-second ad by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee begins with a somber musical score and images of war, high gas prices, the coffins, pollution, breached levees, followed by pictures of Texas Republican DeLay, disgraced GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

"Washington Republicans have sold Americans out," a banner states. "American families are paying the price."

The National Republican Congressional Committee promptly gathered more than a dozen GOP members of Congress, many of them former service members, to denounce the ad and call on Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the DCCC chairman, to apologize.

"For the Democrats, everything is about politics," said Rep. Tom Reynolds, R-N.Y., chairman of the Republican campaign committee. "This crosses the line."

And now from a Democrat:

U.S. Rep. John Spratt has asked the House Democrats' campaign arm to pull a fundraising video that shows caskets draped with American flags and a soldier standing at a grave.

"I strongly recommend that you pull this ad and delete both of these clips before running it again," Spratt wrote Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in a letter dated Thursday.

In the two-paragraph letter, Spratt said he would discuss his feelings about the ad in greater detail later, "but I urge you to pull the ad immediately."

The letter was sent one day after the video's release prompted Spratt's Republican challenger, state Rep. Ralph Norman, to ask South Carolina's longest-serving congressman to "repudiate the new lows your party leaders have sunken to."

I hope Spratt's objection is sincere and not just a attempt to salvage his political campaign.

The quick reaction is, of course, to be outraged, but frankly its doesn't really bother me when the Democrats choose to market themselves using methods that are sure to anger much of middle America. It only makes it less likely that they'll make any significant gains in the '06 elections.

While the flag-draped coffins may play well with the rabid anti-war left, I doubt that it will play well with most of the rest of the country.

UPDATE: Dems pull ad.