Kickin It Old School (politically speaking)

In case you think partisan rancor is a new phenomenon, I quote ex-Union General Robert Ingersoll, speaking on the behalf of Rutherford B. Hayes, during the 1880 Hayes Presidential campaign to other northerners, refighting the Civil War 15 years later and playing off those predjudices and fears (from Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation, p 129),

Every man that shot Union soldiers was a Democrat. Every man that denied Union prisoners even the wormeaten crust of famine... was an is a Democrat. Every man that loved slavery better than liberty was a Democrat. The man that assassinated Abraham Lincoln was a Democrat... Every man that raised bloodhounds to pursue human beings was a Democrat. Every man that clutched from shrieking, shuddering, crouching mothers, babes from their breast, and sold them into slavery, was a Democrat... Soldiers, every scar you have on your heroic bodies was given you by a Democrat. Every scar, every arm that is lacking, every limb that is gone, is a souvenir of a Democrat. I want you to recollect it.

Makes Frist, DeLay, Clinton, Rove, and Dean rhetoric seem downright refreshing.