NP: CMJ New Music Monthly, Volume 136

I've seen a lot of ink poured over the notion that voters are increasingly frustrated with negative advertising. Reading a summary of this forum on the subject that claimed the negativity was actually turning voters off, coupled with recent accounting that something like 99% of dollars spent by some arm of the GOP went toward attack ads, I started wondering why the Republicans might resort to a tactic that's becoming so reviled.

The quick answer was that disillusioning the electorate may be exactly what they're after. If you annoy the moderates enough -- the ones that are leaning so heavily toward the Democrats right now -- they might get sick of the whole process and just not bother voting.

Granted, I've been reading plenty of those "the GOP isn't as clever as you think they are" stories in the last week or so, but this just seems to make intuitive sense. It seems like the GOP is trying to make the undecided or uncommitted voter stay home out of disgust, which would maximize the effect of their Get Out The Vote efforts.

Anyway, just a theory.