{"id":13200,"date":"2007-10-11T14:15:21","date_gmt":"2007-10-11T18:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13200.html"},"modified":"2007-10-11T14:15:21","modified_gmt":"2007-10-11T18:15:21","slug":"a-top-down-smear-mcconnell-staffer-connected-to-frost-family-fiasco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/a-top-down-smear-mcconnell-staffer-connected-to-frost-family-fiasco\/","title":{"rendered":"A top-down smear? McConnell staffer connected to Frost family fiasco"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

That becomes a much tougher pitch, though, if the Senate Minority Leader’s office is helping propagate the smear.<\/p>\n

This has been an underlying question for a few days now. ABC News noted<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Today, ThinkProgress moved the ball forward<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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

On Monday morning, Don Stewart reportedly sent an email with the following text to reporters:<\/p>\n

“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 \u2039for each kid\u2039 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?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Atrios noted<\/a>, CNN’s awful report on the controversy hit some of the same notes emphasized by McConnell’s communications director.
\n
\nI 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<\/i> the smear; either way, the Senate GOP, Limbaugh, Malkin, & Co. are appendages on the same right-wing hand.<\/p>\n

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 <\/em>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.<\/p>\n

It says as much about the GOP base as the GOP itself.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}