If you’re a GOP candidate with your back to the wall, it’s probably not a good idea to say, “read my lips.” Brings back bad memories.

The GOP candidate in question here is not George H.W. Bush — it’s Senator Mike DeWine, who’s fallen far behind Dem challenger Sherrod Brown. Today a dozen Ohio TV stations yanked a GOP ad attacking Brown, mainly because the ad was demonstrably false. The NRCC sank over $700,000 into the ad. It said Brown “didn’t pay his unemployment taxes for 13 years.” Even though the Brown campaign produced proof that the claim was false, the NRCC hung in there and claimed they weren’t fudging the facts. Still, the networks disagreed and killed the ad.

But the story doesn’t end there. At tonight’s debate between Brown and DeWine, the ad came up again. And DeWine — never one to give up when the going gets tough — hung on to the claim that the ad was true. And he compounded the absurdity of the whole story by saying: “The ad, Sherrod, is true. Read my lips. The ad is true.”

Read his lips.

Eh … times change.

Rep. John Sweeney (R), 6/8/06: “Zarqawi represents the insidious forces that we are fighting in the War on Terror. This is a critical example of why we must stay the course and finish this mission.”

Rep. John Sweeney (R), 10/18/06 : “I think that the strategy of ‘staying the course’ is not a strategy at all. It doesn’t work. There are going to have to be adjustments in any war if that is the case.”

For staying the course before he was against it, I guess.

On a more substantive and serious note, the White House got virtually every member of Congress to go out and embrace the Iraq War last summer. And for one reason. Because Rove and rest of the crew at the White House convinced them it was best political bet. They really should be made now to pay a price for that cynicism.

A Nevada gubernatorial hopeful says he did “nothing wrong” in a series of late-night events that resulted in a panicked woman calling 911 from the bathroom of a Las Vegas Starbucks. That and other news of the day in today’s Daily Muck.

Last throes, but whose?

The Shiite militia run by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr seized total control of the southern Iraqi city of Amarah on Friday in one of the boldest acts of defiance yet by one of the country’s powerful, unofficial armies, witnesses and police said.

More here.

Okay, here’s our project for the day here at TPM.

Last summer the White House made the case to congressional Republicans that the best way for them to weather the Iraq storm politically was to embrace the war and the president’s policy and try to make the debate into one of “staying the course” or “cutting and running.”

As you can see by this post below, Rep. Sweeney (R-NY) did as he was told and now seems to regret it since he’s now saying “I think that the strategy of ‘staying the course’ is not a strategy at all. It doesn’t work.”

A lot of GOP reps made similar statements a few months ago and if you’ll remember they all vote for that Iraq war resolution. And I really doubt Sweeney’s the only one to be caught in such an egregious flip flop.

Politically, of course, that’s very damaging. But this goes beyond gotcha politics. Even for those who don’t support a rapid withdrawal from Iraq, it was crystal clear this summer that the president’s Iraq policy was a disaster. It was the height of cynicism to embrace that policy on the argument (plausible at the time, not so plausible now) that it was the best strategy for the mid-term election. These folks deserve to be punished at the polls for that cynicism when American troops are dying in the field and Iraq is becoming a charnel house.

So, crank up the google or nexis, and you take a look at see if you can find similar ‘stay the course’ quotes from members of Congress in competitive elections. If you can find quotes like that and a more recent flip flop quote, a la Rep. Sweeney (R-NY), we’ll give you a brand new TPM T-shirt for labors and a big thank you online. (We’ll give away up to five T-shirts.)

Wow, that was quick.

Seems like Corker down in Tennessee has a serious case of flip-flopitis on the ‘stay the course’.

See the contest rules below. Everyone can play.

It’s not quite the same as the stay the course, don’t stay the course Corker mumbojumbo, but this editorial in one Virginia paper has a pretty good run-down of Sen. Allen’s (R-VA) flip-flop on this issue.

And they just keep on coming.

Six new House races which were once secure wins for the GOP have suddenly become competitive for Dems in the last week alone.

A new page incident? Rep. Weller (R-IL) says he’s referred one to the Ethics Committee.

CNN has a story up on its site, the headline of which reads: “GOP terrorism ad sparks Democratic furor.”

The first grafs read …

Republicans took a page from President Johnson’s Cold War-era presidential campaign with an advertisement set to air this weekend called “The Stakes,” which prominently features al Qaeda leaders threatening to kill Americans.

“Just like in the Cold War, the reality is that our nation is at war with an ideology and not a country,” said Republican National Committee spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt.

Democrats, however, have called the commercial, which is reminiscent of Johnson’s 1964 “Daisy” ad, a “desperate ploy to once again try to scare voters.”

The advertisement, which is available on the Republican National Committee Web site, is scheduled to run on national news networks Sunday. Republicans are emphasizing national security and terrorism issues in their bid to maintain control of Congress with about two weeks before the November midterms.

The answer to this is not outrage. And the answer’s not to say this sort of ad is out of bounds. The correct answer is contempt and ridicule. The president and his party just don’t have any credibility on this issue left. And Democrats need to act with the confidence that voters know that too.

DHS is run like a joke.

Iraq, unquestionably, has increased the threat of terrorism rather than diminished it.

The president’s whole approach to protecting the nation is a bust. He’s spent hundreds of billions and thousands of lives on threats that didn’t exist and ignored ones that did.

Doing some more cut and paste of bin Laden just doesn’t cut it any more.

The key here is the meta-message behind the way the fight between Republicans and Democrats plays out. Do Democrats cower and complain? Or do they treat the president’s gambits on national security with contempt, since that’s actually the latent view of the majority of the country. This is another example of what a couple years ago I called the Republicans’ Bitch-Slap theory of electoral politics.

Folks in the country know there’s a bin Laden. They remember 9/11. That’s not what this is about. The Republicans are trying to bait Democrats into looking weak by crying foul and expressing outrage. The best response politically is the truest substantively: ridicule and contempt. The president’s policies on national security have been a joke. The country knows it. They’re there. So just say it.