Something any candidate should understand. If the opposition slimes you, you MUST reply. The voters, most of whom have real lives to live, don't pay close attention to the political fray. Many of them still make up their minds while standing in the voting booth. When they hear an attack on a candidate, they assume it's just campaign skirmishing and don't pay much attention.
BUT. If the victim never responds to the slime, people begin to think "Gee maybe there is something in that slime. If it wasn't true, he would have denied it.".
Way back when, Mike Dukakis, governor of Massachusetts was running for the presidency against George Bush. Willie Horton, an ugly convict, was out of prison, on some kind of parole, and he committed another atrocious crime. Bush ran a bunch of TV ads claiming that the Duke was soft on crime. Dukakis never said anything. There were a bunch of things he could have said, but he decided to just say nothing. The mud stuck.
Just last time, Obama accused Mitt Romney of being a blood sucking vulture capitalist, who bought of companies, laid everyone off, canceled their health insurance, and stole the office furniture. Romney never said anything. Romney should have said "At Bain capital we financed the start up of this company and that company and these other companies. They are all still in business, They are employing umpteen thousand workers, with health insurance, and a combined payroll of a many zillion dollars." Romney didn't say a thing, and Obama's slime stuck.
And we are stuck with Obama for three more years.
Motto of the story, when they slime you, you gotta fight back.
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