GOP's illegal tactics in TN hit new low...

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Friday October 15, 2004 · 11:04 AM PDT

2004/10/15 · 11:04

When you think they can't go any lower, they ridicule the handicapped and blame the Dems...
Steve Clemons' Washington Note has the dish... Thanks Joshua for the heads up...

October 15, 2004
DIRTY TRICKS MONTH: REPUBLICANS HAVE NOT LEARNED THEIR FLYER LESSON

WHAT IS IT WITH THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IN THE SOUTH and disgusting political flyers and mailers?

A nasty flyer has turned up in Tennesse politics which depicts a handicapped athlete running on a track with George Bush's face pasted on.

The text reads:

Voting for Bush is Like Running in the Special Olympics -- Even if You Win, You're Still Retarded.

The Traditional Values Coalition and other right wing operations in the South jumped on this fast alleging that Tennessee Democrat Craig Fitzhugh's office, which shares space with the Kerry/Edwards Campaign, was distributing this flyer...

This is "a crass, below-the-belt political strategy to attack" handicapped children, not to mention "cheap and tawdry"...

Oy, what's next?...

I found this article at the Jackson Sun, here's an excerpt...

Offensive flier presents case of 'whodunit' in state House race
By MATT GOURAS

The Associated Press Oct 15 2004

NASHVILLE - The murky origins of an offensive flier getting national attention for portraying voting for President Bush as ''retarded'' is doing little to stop the rhetoric surrounding it.

Democrats said it was planted in the campaign office of state Rep. Craig Fitzhugh, D-Ripley, presumedly by a conservative activist bent on catching the candidate in a gotcha.

Republicans said Democrats simply were trying to draw attention away from the tawdry and offensive material their campaign was distributing.

But the man conservative activists promised could finger Fitzhugh told The Associated Press only that ''someone'' got it from ''somebody.''

The flier mocks the president and children in the Special Olympics.

Andrea Lafferty with the Washington-based Traditional Values Coalition adamantly told The AP she knew the man who could implicate the Fitzhugh campaign with the flier. But James Mitchell of Ripley said he has no idea where it came from.

''This should not be a political thing. This is something making fun of special needs children,'' Mitchell said in a phone interview. ''I don't want it pinned on Fitzhugh, I want it pinned on the one who done it. Fitzhugh is a nice man.''

Mitchell said he didn't know who did it.

''I don't feel like talking anymore about this,'' he said...

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