Buried in a Times piece today on what they portray as an internal Democratic debate about tying Republicans to some of the more-extreme statements of their Tea Party compatriots:
At the Democratic National Committee, aides already have started work on a database to link the most controversial statements of the Tea Party-backed candidates to possible Republican presidential aspirants.
The database will point out, for example, that Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney are supporting the Republican candidate for Senate in Nevada, Sharron Angle, who once said that victims of rape should make “what was really a lemon situation into lemonade,” and Ms. O’Donnell, who has said that having women in the service academies “cripples the readiness of our defense.”
The tactic of linking potential Republican rivals to such statements was already in evidence last week. After Ms. O’Donnell’s victory, a party spokesman told reporters, “The fact that Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin would put their name behind a candidate that believes women who serve our country ‘cripple the readiness of our defense’ make them unfit to be commander-in-chief.”
A handy little rapid-response tool, indeed — let’s hope they put a public front on it and let us use it as well. Room for growth: if they include some “match the speaker to the rabidly insane quote” games, it might just become a family hit. For weird, politically obsessed families. Like mine.
– cpd