Thursday, October 21, 2010

Today’s Adventures in Pot & Kettle

If you’re going to get your tail all puffed up about a negative ad pointing out what a jerk you were in college in the 1980’s, you had better be sure that you haven’t used the same tactic yourself. Via TPM:

Turns out that Rand Paul — who has been incensed over Jack Conway’s suggestion that Paul’s college hijinks are relevant to the Kentucky Senate race — was very recently the candidate making attack ads aimed at the decisions another man made in his college years.

Back in the hotly contested Republican primary, which pitted Paul against establishment pick Trey Grayson, Paul had a field day making an issue out of Grayson’s college-age support for Bill Clinton. Grayson, the current Kentucky Secretary of State, told a group of students in 2008 that when he cast his first presidential ballot in 1992, at age 20, he cast it for Bill Clinton. Most other Kentuckians did, too — Clinton won the state that year, and did it again four years later.

Grayson said he became a Republican later, “when he realized he agreed more often with the GOP on issues.”

But wait, it gets better. One of Mr. Paul’s staunch defenders is Mike Huckabee, who is recording ads and robocalls for him and demanding that Mr. Conway “repent” for his “classless” attack. Well, look what Digby found; it turns out that Mr. Huckabee himself went after his political opponents based on their faith.

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said he considers his rival Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith a religion, not a cult, but questioned whether Mormons believe “Jesus and the devil are brothers.”

Huckabee raised the question on his own in an interview to appear in The New York Times magazine on Sunday, and ignited a new flap in the up-for-grabs race to be the Republican Party’s nominee in the November 2008 presidential election.

The Conway ad must be working; if not, the Paulbots wouldn’t be bringing in Mr. Huckabee.