In their now-promoted diary entry "Tim Hugo's Attack Ad on Rex Simmons is Unethical" Lowell throws a fit because the quotes were in a diary, and not on the "front page":
The diary was NOT by a "Raising Kaine" front pager, it was NOT by "Raising Kaine" as a PAC or a blog, it was simply a diary posted by a pseudonymous commenter on this community blog. (Note: I happen to know who the person was -- a Democrat who worked for Morris Meyer -- but theoretically it could have been a Republican, could have been anyone.) For Tim Hugo to run ads citing Raising Kaine as the source of these quotes is unethical and SHOULD be illegal if it isn't already. Anyone who would do this certainly doesn't deserve to be representing people in the House of Delegates. Disgusting.
If Tim had said "the Raising Kaine PAC", or "The Raising Kaine Blog" in his ad, you could at least entertain their argument. But Tim's ad does neither. It simply quotes the democratic writer, and provides the WEB ADDRESS of the source, which was the raising kaine address.
If RK doesn't want anybody referencing their web site, they shouldn't let people write diaries at the web site.
While Lowell suggests it could have been a republican, he acknowledges it was a democrat, and one who would have knowledge of the campaign tactics of Rex Simmons (whether I would trust a democrat writing at RK is another matter entirely). Further, RK doesn't let just anybody write diaries at their site, you have to register first.
And while Lowell does yeoman's work trying to make pretend Hugo mentioned "Raising Kaine", his protestations fall flat because the ad is there for all to see, and you can clearly see there is NO reference at all to "Raising Kaine".
Of course Raising Kaine strongly endorses Rex. And of course when they learned that one of their democrat bloggers had written something bad about Rex, they had him "take it down". But sorry, Lowell, you can't blame Tim for your own failure to police your bloggers better. The fact that Lowell knows exactly who write the article also explains why the entire leftwing blogosphere has been alerted to try to scare TV stations into pulling the ads -- they are afraid someone will ask why a democrat who worked for another democrat would have such harsh words to say about Rex.
Frankly, I think they are being stupid as well as wrong in their complaints. Who really cares what someone at Raising Kaine says anyway? I doubt anybody who is going to support Tim Hugo is going to look at the web site address and say "oh, there's a name I can trust".
If I found something attacking a democratic candidate, and it was at Raising Kaine, I would cite the source -- and it would have the raising kaine web site in it. If Tim had NOT cited the web address, imagine the screaming about "anonymous unsourced quotes". But Tim did the right thing, he provided a citation even though it was at a web site most thinking people would laugh at. Because that's where the quotes came from.
UPDATE: I like Ben's take on this so much I'm breaking my own rules and linking to his blog:
OH THE IRONY!!!!!!!!
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