OK people, get ready for it. According to the Washington Post, “The National Republican Congressional Committee, which this year dispatched a half-dozen operatives to comb through tax, court and other records looking for damaging information on Democratic candidates, plans to spend more than 90 percent of its $50 million-plus advertising budget on what officials described as negative ads.”

There you have it. This is the big GOP plan to hold onto Senate and House seats in November. These are the same tricks used against John “voted for the war before I voted against it” Kerry, Max “Osama” Cleland, Al “the Liar” Gore, and other honorable members of government who have served both their country and their constituents with distinction.

And who is heading up what could possibly be the largest, most extensive and most expensive pre-election smear campaign in history? None other than Terry Nelson, the guy behind the NH GOP phone-jamming scandal. Check out this article at Talking Points Memo for all the sleazy details.

Do I even need to get into why the GOP needs to resort to these desparate measures? We’ve all lived it over the past six disasterous years. Everything the GOP touched has turned to crap. Now we see the results of total GOP domination. Pure and utter disaster. Failure on every level. Their last remaining threat toward the American people — “only we can protect you from terror” — now rings hollow. Americans are about to call the GOP’s bluff, realizing that if this administration can’t protect us from the aftermath of a hurricane, how are they to protect us from a dirty bomb in NYC?

So what is left for them to run on? Well, they can’t even run on fear anymore. So the only thing they have is to attack their opponents with any bit of dirt they can find on them. And if the past is any indication of where this all will lead, the truth will be the real victim in all this.

The only way the Democrats are going to be able to combat this coming onslaught is to confront it BEFORE it happens — to step out in the public and spend a good percentage of the Dem’s war chest to get the message out to the public — “here it comes people, the same dirty tricks you have seen year after year… They have nothing left to run on, so you’re about to see the most negative campaign from the GOP you have ever seen… We’re just warning you up front… Please, do your homework….”

I don’t know if it will matter in the end. Even recent history tells us that these attacks can be very successful. It’s just a shame that one party is so scared of its record of failures that it always resorts to lies and voting manipulation to get its way. Imagine what the US would be like if everyone ran on the issues and told the truth. But I guess politics has never been that way, so why start now?