Some time ago I posted concerning the Tim Kaine for Governor campaign in Virginia, and a letter (It Stops in Virginia!) written by Tom Daschle in support of that campaign. Sunday the Aberdeen American News, God bless 'em, printed a column of mine focusing largely on that same letter.
Today I received a cordial e-mail from Mo Elleithee, the Kaine campaign Communications director. The note advised me that Raising Kaine! is not in any way affiliated with the Kaine campaign. The official campaign website is Tim Kaine for Governor. Now I am as respectful of plausible deniability as the next Republican, but I can't resist pointing out a few things.
One is that the design of the two websites is rather similar. The navigation bar at the top of each homepage has roughly the same set of links. The exceptions are interesting: Issues in the official site is replaced by Bad Kilgore in the unofficial one. My hunch, and it's just a hunch, is that the same folks designed both.
My point here is not to accuse the Kaine campaign of any dishonesty. Stupid campaign finance laws virtually force all sorts of bizarre and misleading disassociations, and that's John McCain's, not Tim Kaine's fault. But I do not think that the Kaine campaign can easily escape some responsibility for the unofficial website, until and unless they explicitly disassociate themselves with the latter.
And regardless of the connection, Tom Daschle allowed his letter to be prominently featured on the Raising Kaine site. Its a bit absurd of Senator Daschle to complain about character assassination and personal attacks by Republicans on a site which has a page entitled "Jerry Kilgore is a bad, bad man." On that same page we learn that Jerry "Killmore" likes executing people.
The truth of the matter is that Democrats are every bit as given to negative campaigning, personal attacks, and below the belt innuendo as Republicans. Perhaps both sides should be ashamed of themselves. I say not. Let a thousand points of mud be flung. Democracy has always worked this way when it has worked at all. And besides, its the greatest show on earth.
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