The Inky's Halloween Trick On Patrick

This will probably be it posting-wise for today, but I had to say something about this (and that bad word is going to pop up again - I can't help it; it's the only one that fits).

As the august Philadelphia "newspaper of record" wrings its hands every year about nasty campaign ads which most newspapers trot out every election cycle, it decried them yet again today, with this caveat concerning Patrick Murphy in the U.S. PA-08 contest against Mike Fitzpatrick.

Not all "attack" ads are out of bounds. Some fairly illuminate the decisions facing voters. A tough but in-bounds version of such an ad locally takes on Democratic House challenger Patrick Murphy, the opponent of Republican Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick of Bucks County. The commercial consists of Murphy's appearance on a political talk show, in which the Iraq veteran appears hesitant and unable to say how he would have voted on the war.

Yes, I've seen the clip of Chris "Tweety" Matthews asking Patrick over and over and OVER again how he would have voted on the Iraq war, which of course is a stupid question because Patrick, when asked, didn't have all of the facts and information in front of him that he would have needed to make that kind of decision. Of course, Matthews, being more interested in his "gotcha" moment, didn't care about that.

Patrick Murphy wasn't in Congress at the time the resolution to go to war with Iraq was voted on (neither was Fitzpatrick for that matter - I wonder if Matthews ever gave Mikey that kind of treatment or would consider doing so). So the "attack" ad is totally ridiculous and serves no purpose other than to try and paint Patrick into a corner over a decision he never had to make (so, no, Inquirer, the ad is NOT "in play").

But of course this is typical for the Inquirer any more. In their joke of an endorsement of Mike Fitzpatrick about a week ago, they didn't even mention the fact that Patrick's sterling military record was slimed by Kevin Kelly in at Fitzpatrick's press conference (trying not to use the "S.B." term). How they could have ignored that is simply unfathomable to me.

And I really liked the caliber of the paper's editorials yesterday, by the way. Wow, both Charles Krauthammer and James Lileks and some palooka I'd never even heard of ("fair and balanced" indeed - actually, I may have something to say about Krauthammer's column later).

Here's the bottom line, Inquirer: your editorials on the PA-08 congressional race are bullshit because you plainly haven't invested the time to understand the candidates and the issues and thus have the slightest clue as to what you're talking about. Stick to bitching about the sports teams and beating up the Philadelphia DHS instead.