One of the reasons so many people lost their head over Jack Conway's excellent Aqua Buddha ad is because it reached back to Rand Paul's college times. Sen Claire McCaskill called doing so "very dangerous"! Weenie liberal Jason Zengerle at the useless New Republican wailed that:
no candidate over the age of, say, 30 should be held politically accountable for anything he or she did in college—short of gross academic misconduct or committing a felony.
That was part of the reason why Zengerle called Conway's ad "the most despicable ad of the year" in a year in which Karl Rove and the Chamber are delivering a never-ending stream of bullshit, Republicans are screaming about "socialism" in America, and immigrants are being demonized in the most blatantly racist ways.
Funny, though, I didn't see anyone reach for the smelling salts when Rand Paul bashed his primary opponent for ... you guessed it -- something he did in college.
Back in the hotly contested Republican primary, which pitted Paul against establishment pick Trey Grayson, Paul had a field day making an issue out of Grayson's college-age support for Bill Clinton. Grayson, the current Kentucky Secretary of State, told a group of students in 2008 that when he cast his first presidential ballot in 1992, at age 20, he cast it for Bill Clinton. Most other Kentuckians did, too -- Clinton won the state that year, and did it again four years later.
Grayson said he became a Republican later, "when he realized he agreed more often with the GOP on issues."
As our Eric Kleefeld reported back in February, Paul had a field day with the story, fielding a TV ad calling Grayson and Clinton "dangerous allies" and highlighting the fact that Grayson "admitted to voting for draft-dodger Bill Clinton."
No one cared, of course, because ads of this sort are a dime a dozen. You might think they're beyond the pale, but they're not. They're standard SOP. And they're fine. Why shouldn't someone's youthful beliefs be an issue? If candidates have changed their minds, then let them explain the reasons why to the voters. The voters can then decide whether it's relevant or not.
But there's another reason no one cared -- because IOKIYAAR*. Democrats are never allowed to throw punches. It's mean. And unseemly. And we don't want to become the monsters we fight. We don't want to stoop to their level. You get in with the pigs, you become a pig. And giving Congress to the Republicans is fine, so long as we were civilized in our conduct.
Fuck that.
(* It's okay if you are a Republican)