It is quite clear that the New York Post’s Charles Hurt thinks his readers are stupid.
Certainly, he has good reason to believe this–after all, they do read the New York Post.
On Sunday Morning he published the following:
“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.”
Going out on a limb, I predicted that after the election, Hurt would be singing a different tune:
“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.” …[Coakley’s] campaign has been hopeless… 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….
…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.”
But, even after being called out in advance, in a piece linked by Azi Paybarah on the Observer’s well-read Politicker NY blog, Hurt was still shameless enough to publish the following this morning:
“The Republican knockout victory here last night should be a Code Brown alert for President Obama.
It was a political earthquake of equal magnitude to the temblor that crushed Haiti.
Amid the aftershocks and bewilderment, however, it appears that Obama — Mr. Hope and Change who was inaugurated one year ago today — may not fully grasp just how personally responsible he is for the thrashing here in the Democratic heartland.
Even before voters had finished voting, Obama's minions got busy dumping all over Martha Coakley for her terrible campaign. The instant blame game revealed a White House deeply involved in Machiavellian tactics against its own party that would make Dick Nixon blanch.
However terrible the "Chokely" campaign may have been, make no mistake: Obama owns this.”
One day while walking on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, I accidentally stepped on a copy of the NY Post. Luckily, there was some dogshit laying around or I’d have had nothing to wipe my shoe with.