Cross Posted at The Great Society

Over the past week or two I became clued into the election happening in Mexico. The countries politics still live in the shadow of 71 years with a single eminent political party (the PRI, or Institutional Revolutionary Party), yet the PRI will continue to lose power for the second straight election. Two days after the election ... that is about all that is clear . The two candidates outside the PRI are the rightist Felipe Calderon (of the PAN, National Action Party) and leftist Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador (of the PRD, Democratic Revolutionary Party). The race between that has been so bitter and incisive that is has been called the dirtiest election in Mexican history. Not surprising is that Calderon has brought in Texas based political consultant Rob Allyn (of George W. Bush in 2000 fame) to run his day to day operations and advising from none other than Dick Morris. As Dan Lund pointed out in a editorial in the Miami Herald:

Morris is the guy who claims to have written the "campaign book" for Fox in 1999-2000, and is now spreading tail feathers about his role in the Felipe Calderón campaign...

The book is that of a relentless negative campaign, using all forms of media, electronic and informal -- all, at a cost that simply cannot be met by other campaigns. This campaign book has become the choreography of a strange Morris dance that enables the very different factions and interests to hold together and focus on the real enemy, namely Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City, came in to the election as one of those most popular figures in Mexican politics. Yet, Calderon has been relentless. He often compared Obrador to Hugo Chavez and even Fidel Castro.