The only thing more entertaining than two national Republicans going at each other is watching two Texas Republicans going at each other. The campaign has barely started and they are already going after each other in a way that made the Obama-Hillary fight look like child's play. And according to the Austin American-Statesman, Kay Bailey Hutchison’s people may be trying to find sly ways into dredging up old rumors about Gov. Rick Perry's sexuality.
This morning, I came across a Web site for U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s gubernatorial campaign.
A provocative twist: The site may have been juiced with the intent of drawing visitors with the help of more than 2,200 hidden phrases—including “rick perry gay.” (See the phrases here.)
On my inquiry, Hutchison’s campaign spokesman, Jeff Sadosky, initially said he’d look into the matter. He later issued a statement that didn’t indicate how the phrases landed on the site, but said they weren’t condoned and would be removed.
Sadosky said: “We did not know these offensive word associations were being searched for by hundreds of thousands of Texans everyday nor do we condone the computer-generated existence on our Web site. They will be removed promptly.”
UPDATE 2:33 p.m.: Sadosky and other campaign aides said this afternoon that only the two phrases using “rick perry gay” will be removed because they won’t play into the campaign’s future messages.
Broadly, the campaign said a vendor sold them on a tool that generates the phrases hourly or less in an attempt to divine the most frequent Web searches made by individuals who search online using one or all of the terms “Rick Perry,” “Kay Bailey Hutchison” and “Texas.”
Punch line: The generated phrases aren’t intended to drive up traffic to the standbykay site; they are intended to help Hutchison’s campaign decide most efficiently where to purchase banner ads or other Web-related advertisign that would drive people to the site, where visitors can volunteer, chase information or make donations.
Sure! The vendor was just trying to help find the best places to advertise by where someone says that Rick Perry is gay. Uh huh. It's not like KBH hasn't already tried to discredit the family values governor with tihs line before. Stay tuned, this ought to be fun.
Update [2009-7-31 0:39:1 by RandySF]:
It's been mentioned by commenters how are far more web savvy than myself that the innocent explanation presented by the KBH campaign could be true. However, how should we take this remark by Team Kay:
“We did not know these offensive word associations were being searched for by hundreds of thousands of Texans everyday
Would Mr. Sadosky care to explain?