Wednesday 10 April 2013

McConnell accuses Dems of dirty tricks

McConnell accuses Dems of dirty tricks, When Mother Jones Magazine reported April 8 on secret audiotape of Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) campaign plotting against possible contender actress Ashley Judd , McCcnnell’s office went through the roof, calling in the FBI to investigate.

Viewed as another Democratic dirty trick, the secret McConnell recording was not all that different from the one that upended the Romney campaign Sept. 18. Mother Jones published Mitt at a May 17 fundraiser recorded saying the nation’s 47% freeloaders will vote for President Barack Obama no matter what to collect their government largesse.

Romney had a difficult time explaining away his views on the 47%, helping hand Barack a landslide victory Nov. 6, 2012. Whether admitted to or not, the Christian right couldn’t in clear conscience get behind a Mormon for president, no matter how conservative his economic and social views.

McConnell pounced on the chance to rip Democrats for Watergate-like conspiracyt, when, in reality, the only thing that happened was that in today’s easy electronic age, another iPhone embarrassed a naive campaign.

“Sen. McConnell’s campaign is working with the FBI and local U.S. attorney in Louisville per FBI request about these recordings,” said McConnell campaign manager Jesse Benton, trying to turn the tables on the GOP’s recent embarrassment. “This is what you get from the political left in America,” McConnell complained.

“Much like Nixon in Watergate, that is what the political left does these days,” forgetting that the GOP bitterly defended Nixon’s right to privacy, blaming the political left for scurrilous accusations against a true American patriot. McConnell doesn’t want to the public to focus on his campaign’s vicious assault on Ashley Judd.

Mother Jones reported that the transcript reveal the kinds of ugly tactics used by McConnell’s campaign to discredit Judd before she announced her candidacy for McConnell’s Kentucky Senate seat.

Romney’s campaign had the same reaction once the videotape of Romney ripping the “47%” for expecting the government to give away health care, welfare, food stamps and other federal largesse. “She clearly, this sounds extreme, but she is emotionally unbalanced,” said McConnell’s aide. “I mean it’s been documented.

Jesse can go chapter-and-verse from her autobiography about, you know, she’s suffered suicidal tendencies. She was hospitalized for 42 days when she had a mental breakdown in the ‘90s,” read the Mother Jones videotape. Whether any of the facts were true or not, there’s nothing wrong with a campaign going after a potential candidates’ vulnerabilities.

Calling the Mother Jones’ transcript proof of the GOP’s “politics of personal destruction that embody Mitch McConnell,” said Judd’s spokesman. Calling in the FBI could backfire on McConnell, exposing more dirty laundry to the public regarding the ins-and-outs of political campaigns.

“We expected nothing less than Mitch McConnell and his camp than to take a personal struggle such as depression, which many Americans cope with on a daily basis, and turn it into a laughing matter,” said Judd’s office. What Judd’s office doesn’t get is that anything’s fair game running for public office.

When the press outed former Sen. George McGovern’s (D-S.D.) first VP pick Sen. Thomas Eagelton (D-Mo.) in 1972 as having gone through “shock therapy” for depression, he was forced to withdraw his name. No one called in the FBI for outing Eagleton’s inpatient psychiatric history.

Whoever recorded McConnell’s secret strategy session was definitely treated to some real juicy material. Blaming it on the vast left wing conspiracy helps the McConnell camp divert attention away from the ugly reality of political strategizing.

Judd’s personal history—mental health or otherwise—was fair game if she decided to throw her hat into the right. Why Judd bowed out of the race is anyone’s guess. Skeletons in the closest tend to eventually come out. Pointing fingers at Mother Jones as a “lib” publication doesn’t address the newsworthiness of the story.

“I can say with the utmost certainty that this did not come from anybody inside our campaign,” Benton told Fox News host Mike Huckabee. Benton knows that it’s not really important whether or not it came from inside or outside the campaign. There’s nothing illegal about recording strategy sessions.

Sparing the GOP more embarrassment, McConnell’s campaign has worked overtime to divert sleazy—but legitimate—campaign strategy into some nefarious Democratic trick. “So, that could only lead me to believe that this was illegally and illicitly recorded by an outside source, which is felonious and unethical and immoral,” said Benton, showing more hyperbole that a carnival huckster.

No one from the Romney campaign called in the FBI—or National Guard—to deal with an egregious public admission by someone trying to run a competitive campaign. Benton’s overstatements show the extent of McConnnell’s embarrassment over how his campaign planned to hit Judd below the belt.

Benton knows there’s nothing “illegal” or “felonious” about recording stupid remarks by campaign officials, whether or not they’d like to keep them secret or take them back.

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