Dana Milbank's piece on the "mystery senate candidate" who considered his "R" label a scarlet letter was far less interesting once the subject of the interview was revealed -- Maryland's Michael Steele. Republicans are never in friendly territory in statewide Maryland races, so the piece had none of the potency it might've carried had, say, DeWine been the mystery candidate.
In any case, once Steele's identity was revealed (and it took like 2.5 seconds for that to happen), Steele's campaign claimed it was all a big setup by the Big Bad Washington Post:
In an exclusive interview on WBAL's "The Buzz", Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele says his comments about President Bush and the Republican Party were taken out of context in a story in The Washington Post [...]
Steele said it was an "off the record" meeting with the reporters and the Washington Post is the only paper that did a story on what was said in the meeting.
Except that, oops, there's an email that totally contradicts Steele's CYA maneouver.
Today, the Maryland Democratic Party sent Political Wire a copy of an email between Steele's communications director and Millbank giving approval for use of Steele's quotes and discussing the terms of the story. The email makes clear Steele's campaign knew about the story in advance and was even given the opportunity to approve the quotes in the story.
Hapless. It looks like the WaPo wasn't in the mood to take the blame for Steele's big mouth.