There’s going to be rather an abundance of gloating and knife-toothed smiles (as well there should be) among Democrats tonight as people read Mike Allen’s piece in Thursday’s Post revealing the identity of the person who wrote the infamous Schiavo ‘talking points’ distributed in the senate last month.
This is the document that called the Schiavo tragi-circus a “a great political issue” and one that “the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating.”
Turns out it was the legal counsel to freshman Sen. Martinez (R) of Florida, a former gun-rights lobbyist named Brian Darling. As you might imagine, Darling’s now chosen to leave the senator’s employ and move on to other opportunities.
I’ll let others dig into how many other Republicans knew about the memo, or helped distribute it or whatever else.
To me, though, the folks who really deserve to be tarred and feathered over this are the almost criminally fatuous commentators and reporters who wrote up stories suggesting the memo was actually a dirty trick by the Democrats, a false flag operation meant to make the Republicans look bad.
In politics, anything is possible. And often the most improbable and devilish things turn out to be true. So, sure, anyone could have been the author.
But look at the evidence some folks walked into print with …
Look, all the Republicans senators say they didn’t do it! And if they didn’t, who did?
And did you see that the strategy memo wasn’t written on RNC letterhead? And you want us to believe it was written by a Republican?
I hope some folks have sense enough to feel like real fools tonight.
