Barry Goldwater

The most toxic and notorious political ad in history was Lyndon Johnson's "Daisy" commercial used against Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater in 1964. On Sunday, New York magazine's Frank Rich called for President Obama to create and air a series of attack ads in the style of "Daisy" to "nuke" Mitt Romney:

The potential for over-the-top advertising from Democrats to defend Medicare is definitely there, Rachel Maddow told her MSNBC audience Monday. She should know, since her show of late is little more than a Medicare commercial for Democrats. As she talked about the next day's special election in New York's 26th House district, Maddow described Jim Martin, chairman of the 60 Plus advocacy…

Daniel Schorr’s passing on Friday, at age 93, reminded me of the kind of assaults CBS News unleashed on conservatives before there were any countervailing forums available. A 2001 Weekly Standard article (nine years in my “pending” file!) detailed a particularly vicious left-wing hit piece he narrated in 1964 which linked Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater with neo-Nazis in Germany,…