G. Frink's

Some of my friends say my critique of the North Carolina Republican Party's current advertising efforts and apparent decline was unfair. They argue that the current party leaders can inspire paranoid irrationality with at least as much skill as Jesse Helms at the peak of his powers.

In an attempt to be fair I ask you to compare the elegant skill with which Helms in 1990 misled voters about former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt with a simple pair of white hands, crumpling a rejection letter, while a persuasively confiding voice explains the man's unfortunate predicament.

Whereas the current ad has none of Helms ad's trademark intimacy of delivery and precise focus on that single, compelling sentiment which can send you stumbling to the polls blind with silent rage, to vote vengeance for an uncommitted offense.

Instead this North Carolina Republican Party offers us the unfocused pretense of opposition to both Bev Perdue and Richard Moore for Governor, while attempting to Mau-Mau three candidates with a confused image massaged to resemble bygone Hollywood epics of Africa.

The pasted-on cry of "too extreme!" offers no resolution and is further confused by the concluding motherly lecture.

The evidence is here before you. They made a good-faith effort to appeal to racist sentiment and fear. All of the usual right pieces are there, somewhere. I acknowledge that. But as a result of failures of scripting, production and delivery, and a loss of heart, it doesn't work.

This North Carolina Republican Party is a sad, decadent shadow of its former campaign-time self.