Okay, so it wasn't so much Norm Coleman apologizing to Al Franken as the "Coleman campaign", and it wasn't so much an apology as an admission they got caught. But it's still amusing...
According to Minnesota Public Radio,
Republican Sen. Norm Coleman's re-election campaign is apologizing to two Minnesota newspapers for two nearly identical letters to the editor that ended up published under two different names. The campaign acknowledges a staffer was behind the letters.
Oops.
In the immortal words of Frank Zappa, "...but then I got caught / and now I've sinned".
The Coleman campaign's acknowledgment, in its reported entirety - "It's a mistake, but in the realm of the campaign, it's a mistake you learn from, and you move on and it's not going to happen again."
When I called this an "apology", I wildly exaggerated.
Has anyone mentioned to them that they're running against a professional comedian? What, are the writers still on strike and we have to hire the Coleman campaign to generate material? The incompetence of this move is almost breathtaking.
Moreover, it highlights the dangers of running an Astroturf campaign in this day and age. And Astroturf is what this is... a political campaign handing letters to supporters to send to newspapers as if the letters were their own. When all the letters are conveniently online now, it's just too easy to get caught.
If this is the best the Coleman campaign has, kicking his sorry ass out in November will be a cakewalk.