Imagine the pile-on that would be occurring from other members of the nation's establishment press if a Republican or conservative U.S. Senate candidate went after an individual member of the press as Alison Grimes just has against NBC/MSNBC reporter Chuck Todd. The "How dare you?" cries would be everywhere.
It's hard to see how employing such a tactic works to get votes, but Grimes, the Democrats' candidate for U.S. Senate in Kentucky, seems to think that acting as if she's standing up to playground bullies might get her some mileage. Todd, along with incumbent Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, is one of the supposedly all-powerful bullies. Video follows the jump:
Transcript:
Kentucky is ready for a senator who is an independent thinker that can put the partisanship aside and actually fight for the people of this state, and who won't be bullied by Mitch McConnell or Chuck Todd.
Grimes, readers will recall, has repeatedly refused to say whether she voted for Barack Obama in 2012. She's hiding behind the privacy of the ballot box to defend her refusal to disclose.
That justification is fine for someone who isn't running for political office. It's absolutely indefensible for someone who is now claiming that she doesn't support a lot of the policies of a sitting president who is a member of her party. Poor Alison is claiming that those who criticize her for this position are trying to bully her.
Todd's alleged bullying consists of expressing his opinion that Grimes' failure to say whether she voted for Obama in 2012 "disqualifies" her. Todd has already expressed frustration, to the point of saying he was "physically ill," over having his assessment used in a McConnell as to pommel Grimes' pathetic posturing.
Grimes is clearly getting reckless, not just in this instance but in her attempts to attack McConnell.
On Thursday, Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post gave Grimes another quartet of Pinocchios for an ad claiming that "Mitch McConnell didn’t fight to get the scrubbers it needs to reduce coal emissions" at a Bluegrass State coal plant." McConnell, needless to say, does not work in the Purchasing Department at American Electric Power's Big Sandy plant, where the decision to not buy scrubbers was made.
In the process, Kessler notes, "the candidate herself repeats a claim that The Fact Checker has already deemed worthy of Four Pinocchios."
Kessler nailed the candidate's strategy: "... the most fact-challenged ads are those that fly under the radar, as campaigns hope that reporters don’t notice the content — but voters do." It didn't work. It's now fairly well-known that Grimes will make up almost anything to trick voters into thinking she's on their side, when the fact is — to name just one instance — that her staff and her donors fully expect her to support President Barack Obama's war on coal.
It's also hard to see how acting as if she being victimized by an MSNBC/NBC reporter will convince any Kentuckians to pull the lever for her.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
