Matt Gunterman September 26th, 2007

The Courier-Journal’s David Hawpe throws Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) to the mat this morning. The national spotlight of being Minority Leader is revealing McConnell’s fecklessness and his utter disregard for the people he was elected to serve. McConnell sold the peoples’ government to the corporations all to get his name in the history books. In a bit of cosmic justice, he will inherit in those history books the legacy he deserves: as an influence-monger, money-grubber, and hyper-partisan who corrupted and paralyzed the nation’s government.

Is this a little selective outrage from the McConnell Corner?

What utter hypocrisy.

Where were the Republicans in the U.S. Senate when a 2002 GOP television ad trashed Democrat Max Cleland, who lost both arms and a leg in a Vietnam grenade blast?

Those ads, aired by then-Rep. Saxby Chambliss, used photos of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden to bolster false claims that Cleland was soft on homeland security.

Where was the GOP outcry against that smear?

Where, in particular, was Sen. Mitch McConnell, who this week orchestrated a Senate vote condemning the stupid and unfair MoveOn.Org newspaper ad that asked, “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?”

McConnell and his GOP caucus filibustered a Democratic alternative that also denounced the disgusting GOP attacks on triple-amputee Cleland and the 2004 Swift-boating of Sen. John Kerry.

When MoveOn.Org published its ad in The New York Times, the Republican stampede to grab the public relations opportunity was thunderous.

Most Democrats and virtually all Republicans have denounced the ad. The public relations firm that worked with MoveOn.Org on it, Fenton Communications, should give back any fee it charged.

A Senate vote quickly was scheduled, for the purpose of putting Democratic front-runner Sen. Hillary Clinton on record defending the ad.

The New York Times, not content with having harbored reporter Judith Miller and having published her botched journalism, which helped supply false justification for the Bush-Cheney war-of-choice in Iraq, also botched the MoveOn.org ad placement request. Ombudsman Clark Hoyt said the copy violated the Times’ own standards. A spokesman conceded the Times gave MoveOn.org an undeserved price break.

The American right must be giddy with glee.

I’m sure our senior senator, Minority Leader McConnell, is.

Never mind that he is supposed to be a champion of free speech.

I’ve consistently defended McConnell from the attacks of those who don’t like his opposition to a constitutional amendment that would ban flag burning. He says even speech that hateful should be permitted, and I agree with him.

Yet he presides over the condemnation of MoveOn.org’s effort to speak out against the war.

Oh, you say MoveOn.org’s “Petraeus/Betray Us?” ad was too personal. It attacked a fine man with a fine record.

Need I recall McConnell’s “hound dog” campaign commercials, which viciously attacked a fine man, Dee Huddleston, with a fine public record, who was serving honorably in the U.S. Senate? Yes, the ads were funny — very funny — but only because they mocked Huddleston and reduced him to a figure of fun.

I consistently have defended McConnell’s right to use those commercials, because I think they got at a real issue — Huddleston’s lack of visibility. I won’t defend false and outrageous TV spots, but it’s true, as the senator says, that when mud thrown in a campaign sticks, it usually sticks for a reason.

What really bothers me about the MoveOn.org resolution is the double standard.

It’s OK for the Republicans to savage the reputation of Max Cleland, a veteran who gave two arms and a leg in Vietnam, and won the Silver Star, but it’s not OK for MoveOn.org to attack David Petraeus?

Hillary Clinton voted against the politically inspired resolution condemning MoveOn.org. Good for her.

She understands that the “values” we’re supposed to be installing at the point of a gun in Iraq include freedom of speech — the right to engage in pointed political protest.

Her colleague Barack Obama called the Senate resolution “empty politics,” but when it came time to vote he took a walk.

Shame on him.

As for McConnell, it’s too bad he and other Senate leaders, who set the priorities and oversee the progress of legislation, have time for political stunts like this, but can’t find time, for example, to fix a broken American health care system.

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