November 4, 2010

Guerrilla Politics

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Tonight’s New York Times puff piece about the Republicans’ visionary two-year strategy for regaining control of Congress (lots of money, lots of obstruction, lots of candidate recruitment — i.e., the usual) contains the following guerrilla warfare nugget:

They also tried to push Democrats into retirement, using what was described in the presentation as “guerilla tactics” like chasing Democratic members down with video cameras and pressing them to explain votes or positions. (One target, Representative Bob Etheridge of North Carolina, had to apologize for manhandling one of his inquisitors in a clip memorialized on YouTube. Only this week did Republican strategists acknowledge they were behind the episode.)

I guess all’s fair in love and politics, but seriously? One of their official strategies, memorialized in a PowerPoint presentation, was to harrass Democrats with video cameras until they got so sick of politics that they just gave up? Did we really just hand over control of Congress to a bunch of seventh graders?

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