CHARLES HURT (in, [where else?] the NEW YORK POST): Call it smear by association.
It appears to be — literally — the only hope Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley has to pull off a slender victory here, in one of the most Democratic states in the country, for a seat so long owned by one of the most beloved liberal lions America has ever known.
Yet this is what it's come to: Don't vote for Scott Brown because look at all the yucky people in his party.
And: Vote for me because look at all the swell people in my party…Coakley broke the glass on negative ads last week when she rolled out one on television informing voters — in a scary voice — that Scott is a Republican and that the Republican Party is the very same party that was once headed by George Bush and Dick Cheney.
Shriek and grasp thy pearls.
In the further service of desperation, Coakley also broke another Scott "scandal" by informing voters that the Republican Party to which he belongs also happens to be the same party that a certain famous radio host — Rush Limbaugh — disparages less often than the Democratic Party.
Run for your lives.
Even Bill Clinton, who is perhaps the savviest political operator in Democratic politics, came here this past week and realized Coakley has no other hope.
So he cut a robo-call — those insidious automated telephone recordings that come into your home — reminding voters of Coakley's earth-shattering discovery that Bush was once head of the Republican Party to which Scott now belongs…
Of course, the really big gun in this game of association politics is President Obama, and he will try riding to Coakley's rescue today…
…Watching Obama perform this dirty business is such a leap from his own historic campaign where it was all about your principles and what you would do. This? This is just all about who you know.
It is instructive given where the post-election spin will go if, as expected, the Democrats lose the Massachusetts Senate seat, that the Republican noise machine is desperately trying to do all it can to avoid having this race “nationalized.”
Though Republicans have pretty regularly held the Massachusetts Governorship, they‘ve been unable to win a Senate seat there since the early 70s. Bill Weld, the State’s most popular Republican officeholder in recent times, could not beat stiff as rigor mortis John Kerry.
Normally, a dead dog could win a US Senate Seat in the Commonwealth if he’s running on the Democrat line.
The Democrats’ problem is that they are not running a dead dog, they are running Martha Coakley.
Her campaign has been hopeless. Once nominated in a rather heated primary, she apparently decided the election was over. Famously, she sneered at her Republican opponent for campaigning outside Fenway Park in the cold. She also dissed a local sports hero. Her campaign has been one misstep after another. Some of those missteps have almost risen to the level of despicability.
Coakley’s only hope is to get voters to ignore the fact that they dislike her, and to make the race about whether you prefer Democrats to Republicans; whether you prefer Barack Obama or Rush Limbaugh.
After all, that is what the race is about.
If you don’t believe me, watch what Hurt and others of his ilk say after the election.
But until then, when Coakley makes this point, or others more effectively make it for her, Republican shills like Hurt cry “foul” and call it unprincipled.
Yes, there is the matter of health care. The Commonwealth has a health care plan remarkably like Obama’s current one; it is a plan which was supported by Brown himself when it passed the legislature. Part of Brown’s pitch has been that Massachusettes has nothing to gain from a National Health Care Reform.
This may or may not be the case, but it is surely not the message that will be drawn from a Brown victory. A message further muddied by the fact that when attacked on same sex marriage or national defense policy, Brown takes pains to argue that his positions are more in line with those held by President Obama than are those of his opponents.
I am not attempting pre-disaster spin; as I made clear earlier today, I believe this election is emblematic of a larger problem faced by the Democrats.
But Yoda, Skurnik and I all are so very, very tired of writing those columns comparing what Republicans were saying weeks or months ago with what they are saying today. So I write this in the perhaps naïve hope that Charles Hurt will have enough shame to hold his tongue while the other Republican shills are gleefully calling this election the first tolling bell in the beginning of the end of Barack Obama and the Democratic Agenda.