Although StuHunter's diary yesterday correctly described much of the day's ridiculousness by New York's Tea Party-turned-GOP gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino, there was one key point that the diary didn't mention: the latest example of the internal sniping and worse that is (happily) plaguing the political right this election season. In his 3-minute video statement yesterday, Paladino committed what may be an unforgivable sin in his circles: he publicly criticized NewsCorp.
In Paladino's 3-minute video, aired yesterday as a paid ad on multiple upstate NY TV stations, he sought to explain why he told a New York Post editor, Fredric U. Dicker, "I'll take you out," during a recent public confrontation. According to Paladino's video ad, he got angry when a Post photographer repeatedly "went after" his 10-year-old (out of wedlock) daughter, making her "vulnerable to kidnapping or sexual predators." Setting aside the fact that Paladino's decision to run for statewide public office is a much more relevant cause for the media's interest in his daughter and any resulting vulnerability she may have, Paladino made a point in the ad to repeatedly criticize the New York Post, a tabloid and sister property to NewsCorp's Fox News, and even used a confirmation from The New York Times to do so.
It's no wonder that the Post's descriptions of Paladino are shifting from "insurgent" when he won the primary to today's "Bigmouth Buffalo Buffoon strikes again." The other NewsCorp outlets are getting into the fray as well; an October 6 FoxNews.com story about Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's GOP rival, Joe DioGuardi, describes him without attribution as having "been labeled a more palatable Carl Paladino," and the Post's sister paper in NY, the Wall Street Journal, published a complimentary story about Paladino's Democratic opponent, current Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, including the following paragraph:
Republican officials, who had spoken with Mr. Paladino, said beforehand that they expected he would back away from his inflammatory rhetoric and perhaps even offer an apology. Instead, Mr. Paladino lashed out at the media for asking him about an extramarital affair he had previously acknowledged and bothering the 10-year-old daughter born of that relationship.
(Of course, the WSJ never points out that the "media" at whom Paladino "lashed out" is a fellow NewsCorp property.)
I write this, admittedly with a bit of schadenfreude, not to encourage complacency among progressives; God forbid! I've been calling for an energized progressive base at least since last December. Rather, this latest eat-your-own incident, along with Joan McCarter's DKos front page piece about how Christine O'Donnell is criticizing the credentials of her fellow Tea Party senatorial candidates (disclosure: I too went to Yale Law School, which means I saw first hand that there are some loons like Joe Miller who can get in and get through without apparently absorbing anything substantive), and askew's piece on the endorsement of Harry Reid by Nevada's Republican state senate minority leader Bill Raggio, demonstrate a major, weakness within the GOP that Democratic candidates and supporters alike can and must exploit. Sure, we have our own internal differences, but we also truly offer a big tent, unlike the faux-populist Tea Partiers whose true extremism is now both taking over and ripping apart the GOP.
We just have to stay focused and (as President Obama said yet again at a reception yesterday for IL Sen. candidate Alexi Giannoulias) get fired up and ready to go. If, at the same time, the opposition keeps trying to set itself (metaphorically speaking) on fire, well, all the better. {ProfJonathan}