New Attack Ad Sets Dangerous Precedent

Political campaigning can be a cynical business, but this takes things to a whole new level. Check out this ad by Republican Timothy Hugo of the Virginia House of Delegates. The ad quotes "others" as saying that Democrat Rex Simmons ran "the most cowardly campaign I have ever seen.... Rex was spreading lies..... Rex has been lying to voters the entire campaign." But, that's not the shocking part.

In the ad, the only source given for this is "www.raisingkaine.com", the progressive political blog Raising Kaine. The issue, though, is that none of those comments ever appeared on www.raisingkaine.com. Instead, they were buried deep in the site on an entry in a pseudonymous diary. This entry was not written by one of the blog's organizers, and it never appeared on the homepage. And, of course, these quotes were taken completely out of context. (To be fair, though, this is a little different than Hugo having quoted a commenter on a blog post--as the Washington Post implied in its coverage--although it's not far from it).

This ad is incredibly misleading and unethical, and if it is allowed to continue to run, it raises a dangerous precedent. If this is acceptable political behavior, then what would stop a candidate from quoting some anonymous commenter on The Scientific Activist and attributing what he or she wrote to me... even if this commenter wrote exactly the opposite of what I had written?

Nothing, as far as I can tell.

For more on the story, check out these entries from Raising Kaine.