Matt Ortega

Think Progress obtained an e-mail from inside the office of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) sent by a staffer, Don Stewart, that propagated the smear campaign against the family of a 12-year old supporting the S-CHIP reauthorization in the Democratic Radio Address last week.

In the email, Stewart attacks Democrats for allegedly doing a bad job “vetting this family.” That effort to blame Democrats for the smear campaign seems to have swayed some reporters, as CNN this morning claimed that the real story is that “the Democrats didn’t do as much of a vetting as they could have done.”

The New York Times reported yesterday that “an aide” to Sen. McConnell “expressed relief that his office had not issued a press release criticizing the Frosts.” No, what the McConnell staffer did was worse — he used the power and privilege of the Senate office to secretly propagate a baseless smear campaign against a 12-year old boy and his family simply because they disagreed on policy.

At the very least, Stewart should be packing up his desk right now. Senator McConnell’s culpability in this little scheme to defame a 12-year old is unclear but don’t be so quick to rule it out just yet.

Faiz Shakir, Think Progress editor, noted that conservative blogger Michelle Malkin scoffed at the suggestion McConnell’s office had anything to do with the campaign against the Frost family. Per usual, Malkin was wildly off the mark.

Traditional media types — this means you, Howard Kurtz — take note. Malkin and her allies’ persistent invasion of privacy and utter depravity in personally attacking this kid and his family for their political argument on children’s healthcare is not the exception, it is the rule, in conservative blogging circles.

The Moderate Voice’s Joe Gandelman laid it all out:

That is the way American politics now operates.

IGNORE the issue. IGNORE the debate on facts, figures, trends and what often-contradictory experts say.

Go after the people who dare to differ with you personally. If you can’t destroy then, then discredit them. Negatively label them in public, or send emails to others to try to get them to go after you. […]

… [I]t’s easier to go after a 12 year-old. After all, these days, anyone who is in the way of an agenda has to be discredited so that no one listens to them anymore. [Ed. note: See Joe Wilson.]

Yet, once upon a time, American society would pull out all stops not to go after a kid. The bar has been lowered yet again.

This time it has been lowered so far, it has struck oil amid the sleaze.

This is how they operate and it is an attack plan supplemented with the standard Republican projection strategy: claim the other side is doing what you have been doing all along.

The outrage Malkin and her ilk sparked, she claims, is an attempt to “silence the right.” But that is precisely what she and her acolytes are trying to do to the Frosts in order to score a political victory and provide cover for President Bush on children’s healthcare; and doing so by stalking the family at their home, places of business, the children’s schools and who knows where else.

Air America Radio host, Rachel Maddow, welcomed Graeme Frost and his family to a long list of Americans undeservedly attacked by the likes of Michelle Malkin.

Blogger Ezra Klein, who writes and focuses on healthcare policy quite extensively, challenged Malkin to debate the issue — she declined.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 11, 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. The views expressed are of the author, and the author alone, and do not reflect the views of the Democratic National Committee.