You don’t have to get into the appropriateness of the MoveOn ad or the intricacies of the NYT‘s ad rate schedule to conclude the obvious: The GOP is engaged in another round of cynical, exploitative caterwauling to change the subject from their party’s Iraq debacle. The manufactured indignation over the MoveOn ad has the added benefit of letting the vast right wing fund-raising machine milk a little more money from what’s left of its base, not to mention that it turns MoveOn into a proxy candidate for president, which may be the only candidate the weak GOP field can beat.
Not convinced? Watch this David Shuster interview with the pathetic Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who is prepared to slam the MoveOn ad and mock the NYT’s financial difficulties (the point of which is what?), but who is brought up short, first when she is asked to repudiate a similar “betray us” remark made by Rush Limbaugh and then when she is asked to name the last soldier from her district to die in Iraq. She won’t and she can’t. Take a look:
As a rule, I’m not much into gotcha politics, and normally Shuster’s question about the name of the soldier from Blackburn’s district would be a cheap shot. But right there and right then, it was right on the mark.
