Comming on the heels of a
great fundraising quarter for Minnesota Senate candidate Amy Klobuchar is
news that a recent Republican attempt to discredit her career as a prosecutor didn't work as planned.
In fact, you might say it completely missed its mark...literally.
In a press release last week, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) quoted three politically prominent Democrats and one Republican -- attacking the crime-fighting record of Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar, the DFL candidate for the U.S. Senate.
Slight problem: None of the four was talking about Klobuchar, although the NRSC said they were.
More below.
The staff at the Star Tribune apparently doesn't like seeing people being taken for chumps.
If there were rules of straightforwardness in political discourse, the referee would throw a flag on this press release and penalize the NRSC for context fabrication.
It turns out people don't like their quotes being taken out of context to criticize somebody, even if that person is in the other party.
The NRSC also quoted McGowan, a Republican.
In a May NPR interview, McGowan talked about the need to enforce the laws that are on the books and about the problem of giving some offenders "one chance after another."
In the NRSC release, his remarks turned into: "Sheriff McGowan Explains Further That Klobuchar's Office Makes A Habit Of Giving Criminals One Chance After Another."
In fact, during the hour-long interview, Klobuchar's name was never mentioned. McGowan said the NRSC had "completely taken past comments I've made out of context. My statements, regarding holding people accountable, were in response to society and the Minnesota criminal justice system as a whole and were in no way ever directed at Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar."
McGowan demanded that the NRSC issue a clarification.
The author's response has to be one of the most astonishing pieces of double-talk that is so prevalent in the national Republican Party. Emphasis mine.
NRSC spokesman Brian Walton, the author of the press release, didn't claim in an interview this week that the four politicians actually were making explicit references to Klobuchar. In his view, the press release was justified in describing people as talking about Klobuchar, even if they did not believe they were talking about her.
In response to this press release, or perhaps in anticipation of a nasty campaign season, the Star Tribune is starting it's own version of factcheck.org called "Is that a fact?" Sounds like the perfect response to anything said by a Republican candidate, campaign, or other party official.