A top-down smear? McConnell staffer connected to Frost family fiasco

October 11, 2007

When a pseudonymous poster at the Free Republic goes after a 12-year-old boy and his cash-strapped family, the Republican Party establishment has at least some plausible deniability. These are just fringe players, the party can say, and smear campaigns against innocent families isn’t our style.

That becomes a much tougher pitch, though, if the Senate Minority Leader’s office is helping propagate the smear.

This has been an underlying question for a few days now. ABC News noted that “a Senate Republican leadership aide” suggested GOP aides were “complicit in spreading disparaging information about the Frosts.” Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office avoided comment.

Today, ThinkProgress moved the ball forward.

ThinkProgress has obtained an email that congressional sources tell us was sent to reporters by Sen. McConnell’s communications director Don Stewart.

On Monday morning, Don Stewart reportedly sent an email with the following text to reporters:

“Seen the latest blogswarm? Apparently, there’s more to the story on the kid (Graeme Frost) that did the Dems’ radio response on SCHIP. Bloggers have done a little digging and turned up that the Dad owns his own business (and the building it’s in), seems to have some commercial rental income and Graeme and a sister go to a private school that, according to its website, costs about $20k a year ‹for each kid‹ despite the news profiles reporting a family income of only $45k for the Frosts. Could the Dems really have done that bad of a job vetting this family?”

As Atrios noted, CNN’s awful report on the controversy hit some of the same notes emphasized by McConnell’s communications director.

I have to admit, this isn’t terribly surprising. As vile as the smear has been, I’m afraid the line between the unhinged right-wing base and the “responsible” Republican establishment has been blurred, and keeps getting blurrier. Maybe McConnell’s office pushed the smear, maybe McConnell’s office even initiated the smear; either way, the Senate GOP, Limbaugh, Malkin, & Co. are appendages on the same right-wing hand.

The point to remember here, I’m afraid, is that the conservative fringe enjoys good standing in the Republican establishment. If we give McConnell’s office the benefit of the doubt, and believe they were not involved in organizing this smear, it’s still hardly encouraging. Decency should dictate that a respected leader of the U.S. Senate, and his staff, would want nothing to do with a bogus attack against an innocent family. Instead, McConnell’s office couldn’t wait to get the story out to a broader audience.

It says as much about the GOP base as the GOP itself.

I’m reminded of something Charles Barkley said last year: “I was a Republican – until they lost their minds.” Coordinating an attack on the Frost family is Exhibit A of the party’s pathology.

Yeah, and I guarantee you the evidence of the Dan Rather memo “forgery” didn’t originate with bloggers, either.

What freaks me out more than anything is how clear it is John Roberts was just reading off this memo. I mean, when I talk about the GOP Blastfax regurgitated by the Whitehouse Press stenographers, I’m kind of exaggerating for effect because that’s what it looks like. I had no idea this was actually true.

Okay, I always suspected it was true, but I always assumed I had let my partisan biases get the better of me.

Those prejudices seem to be right far more often than the rational, level-head, objective empiricist running around inside my head, telling me not to let my emotions get the best of me.

  • CB, the line between the unhinged right-wing base and the “responsible” Republican establishment has been non-existent for some time now.

    In the age of Rove, it’s not shocking that the Frost smear came from the top. He taught them to do it.

  • I saw the strangest thing the other day in my public library; a cookbook about roadkill—and the recipes were specifically written for cooking roadkill. Now, I’m not into fermented whatever au gratin, but the idea did pop into my head—could we find a culinary use for these little rightwing twits? Wet pet food, perhaps? feeding time at the zoo, maybe? Or just serve ’em up, right out of the can, to your friendly neighborhood Blackwater thug.

    If McConnell’s com-chief can push the smearing of a kid that includes such humane blogbytes as “leave ’em twistin’ in the wind,” then maybe I can push the feeding of McConnell’s com-chief to a family of hungry dairy cows. Then he could “literally” become “bovine excrement….”

  • i made the point in another thread earlier today, and i’ll simply repeat it.

    For roughly a quarter century, the republican party has become increasingly authoritarian in its outlook. this has tended to attract authoritarian personalities into the party base to the point where it is the dominant outlook of the 30-percenters.

    so when we ask why do gop congresspeople behave in seemingly insane ways, the answer, i suspect, has a lot to do with the fact that the base is insane.

  • If they want to talk about the merits of the program, if they want to have a debate about whether it is an appropriate use of taxpayer funds, they should have been paying attention to the House and the Senate when they were doing just that. If Malkin and her ilk want to have it again, fine, let’s have that debate. Maybe while we wait for hell to freeze over, they could maybe ask those Republicans who voted for the bill why they did so.

    If Malkin and Limbaugh and the rest of the right-wing noise machine are opposed to wasteful government spending, then where have they been on all the GOP pork? Where have they been on the waste and fraud in the Iraq contracting mess?

    And why does it make any sense to attack a child who has no ability to obtain his own health insurance?

    And now we see that it isn’t “bloggers” like Malkin who are solely responsible for these attacks – the attacks are also coming out of the office of a US Senator, whose aide sent out an e-mail of talking points to make sure that there is no override of the president’s veto, and lazy so-called journalists like those at CNN are reading off that script rather than doing their own investigation.

    Mitch McConnell and his pals are the same people who have gouged billions of dollars out of the Treasury for their own pet projects, who have stonewalled and stymied oversight and accountability on spending for the Iraq war, allowing firms like Halliburton and KBR to pretty much write their own checks – and that’s just peachy. But ask them to approve a program that helps kids whose parents fall in the middle between qualifying for Medicaid and being able to afford private insurance, kids who have to depend on their parents to get them the health care they need, and it’s a Code Red, all hands on deck, man the barricades. They’ve put more energy and hatred into fighting this one small and worthwhile program, and one little boy than they have a host of other issues.

    It is my fond hope that enough Republicans – and those 5 House Democrats who voted against it – will change their votes in protest of the unconscionable behavior of some of their fellow legislators that the veto is overridden.

    Sorry for the rant…

  • If they want to talk about the merits of the program, if they want to have a debate about whether it is an appropriate use of taxpayer funds, they should have been paying attention to the House and the Senate when they were doing just that. — Anne

    They can never debate anything based on the merits because all their policies are horribly unpopular, and would be even more so if people had a chance to find out what they really were. Thus, changing the topic to MoveOn and 12-year-olds, or the authenticity of indisputable evidence. We aren’t talking about S-CHIP now, are we? But whether Kerry served, I mean, the kid’s a fraud.

  • For some reason that I really can’t explain, Mitch McConnell makes my skin crawl, literally. There is something wrong with him, not just because I disagree with him in social and foreign policy, but because there is something the matter with him.

    Who facilitates such a smear on a defenseless family with a sick child? I have heard that McConnell is a closeted gay man, but there are lots of wonderful gay men who are a pleasure to spend time with, who don’t necessarily publish their sexual preferences. I am not sure what is the matter with the good senator but one day I bet the whole world will find out.

  • Can someone please remind me again why it was such a bad idea for the Democrats to “stoop” to responding to Rush Limbaugh’s phony soldiers comment? Seems to me he and the Congressional Republicans are just one big happy family – happier than the Frosts are now, anyhow…

    How many times do the Democrats need to have their asses handed to them before they grow a pair. They should be all over CNN demanding time to push this aspect of the story. If they aren’t by tomorrow, they either don’t care to take the heat off of the Frosts, or they are just way too incompetent do be in power.

  • Has the media really become that complacent, an email ??

    I was reading an article yesterday in the Houston Chronicle about the R debate and Mitt and Ruby both asserting to have lowered taxes more.

    Near the end of the article I saw this:

    “Independent groups said, however, that both men were wrong in their assertions. They said that Giuliani, for example, didn’t cut taxes as much as he claimed and that Romney did raise taxes and fees.”
    http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chronicle/5201417.html

    Is that so fricken hard ??

  • “Independent groups said, however, that both men were wrong in their assertions. They said that Giuliani, for example, didn’t cut taxes as much as he claimed and that Romney did raise taxes and fees.”

    It is nice that the Houston Chronicle included that sentence, but if it was truly practicing JOURNALISM, it would not have been buried at the end of the article and it would not be a throw-away about “independent groups” disputing Giuliani’s and Romney’s claims. The information should have been in the main part of the story and should have presented verified facts that either supported their claims or discredited the claims. Afterall, whether or not they reduced taxes and how often is not a “he said/she said” kind of thing, but rather something that is a matter of public record. Back when journalism was actually practiced in this country, part of a reporters job was to present facts, not merely be a stenographer for some politician’s talking points.

  • These people don’t care about the issues…that is just cover for what they really want to do. They roam around looking for a lynch mob to join, their only goal is to smear dems and liberals…doesn’t matter what it is . They have turned discourse into ambush. These are hatefilled assassins…driving to the boys home, going to the fathers workplace?? These are the same people that if a soldier claimed he lost a leg and was a liberal they would search for the leg and inspect his stump.

    Who the hell do they think they are to have brought so much hate into the world of politics. They are insane and violently morbid. They have no shame or morals whatsoever and are sociopathic. I wish people would stoop treating them as if there is any hope and just accept the fact that 30% of our population is insane and violently so and that that hatefilled poison has pooled to become the current republican party who are bent on dominating the nation.

    The only solution is to get them out of government and the national press. The GOP operates like a crime family and cannot be trusted to be a part of governing in our democracy. Forget all the reasons why they have become what they are…this IS what they are and they must be removed from power. It is sad as much as it is shameful.

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