Daily Kos Tries to Protect Yarmuth's, Chandler's Flanks by Promoting Hit Pieces

The Daily Kos, godfather of the Nut Roots and Demo-blogs, has launched a project to protect 98 of the most vulnerable Democratic members of the House. John Yarmuth and Ben Chandler both make the cut.

Kos is urging its readers to engage in a "grassroots-based search engine organization campaign," SEO for short. The upshot is that Democratic activists would search for (or create) unfavorable stories about Todd Lally and Andy Barr, opponents of Yarmuth and Chandler, respectively. Likewise for opponents of other vulnerable Democrats. Readers should then forward those stories to Kos, which would promote them to increase the Google ratings of the hit pieces.

According to Kos, "The goal of Grassroots SEO is to get as many undecided voters as possible to read the most damaging news article about the Republican candidate for Congress in their district."

In one respect, Kos's SEO project gets it backwards with respect to Kentucky; they rely on five political lists that rank Chandler as more vulnerable than Yarmuth. Chandler pretends to be a moderate now and then, whereas Yarmuth makes no attempt to hide the fact that he is to the left of Obama. Given that Kentucky is a center-right state, therefore, Yarmuth would seem to be in a more precarious position than Chandler for reelection.

Daily Kos: Jack Conway's "Macaca Moment"

The left-wing Daily Kos has a diary post that describes Democrat Jack Conway's Fancy Farm speech as his "Macaca moment." The Daily Kos has helpfully christened Conway as "Captain Jack" for his "salty language."

Over the weekend at the Fancy Farm church picnic, Kentucky Attorney General Conway, in a bizarre attempt to bolster his street cred for the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, described himself as "one tough" S.O.B.. Except he didn't use the acronym.

Conway's rival for the nomination, Lieut. Gov. Dan Mongiardo, demanded that Conway apologize and Conway caved.

Now watch the left eat its own. Quoting the Rural Kentucky Democrat's Diary, the Daily Kos reads:

This is officially Jack Conway's macaca moment. For those of you who may have forgotten, former Senator George Allen of Virginia used the phrase "macaca", which is a racial slur, in a speech during his reelection campaign of 2006. He was the clear favorite and eventually lost the race due to the slip up.

Conway's outburst has also led to the revamping of the rules set by St. Jerome's Parish. They will issue a "no profanity" rule for future Fancy Farm events. And many in Western Kentucky who were supporting Conway are now dumping him like a bad ham sandwich, and that is a fact.

Jack Conway's campaign stood defiant last night and said "there will be no apology" after the Mongiardo campaign asked for Conway to apologize. Well he is eating crow with a silver spoon, pun intended. This is clearly a disaster for the Conway campaign and there is really no way to recover, in politics at this level you only get one chance. Reports from sources in Washington D.C tell me that the DSCC is not happy, of course the big boyz in D.C were pimping the Conway campaign. I expect they pushed for the apology.

On the big stage you have to keep your cool and for those hitting Mongiardo for his speech need to remember ITS FANCY FARM. But a viable candidate can not react and blow the most important speech of his or her political career and Conway blew it. He may have access to the easy millions but now that is all null and void because his macaca moment will be used against him to the end of time.

At this point he is damaged goods for the Democratic Party. He may be able to recover with time, he is young, but there is no recovering in this race, it will not happen.

Plainly, Conway is not so tough as he so colorfully boasted. Captain Jack capitulated to his rival Mongiardo after watching Mongiardo try to raise a few bucks for his campaign by watching his very pregnant wife dance a strip tease with his tie. (Memo to Dr. Dan: the name of the reality show is Pimp My Ride, not Pimp My Bride.)

Oblivious to his own sanctimonious hypocrisy, Mongiardo appoints himself the Miss Manners who will keep Fancy Farm pure and tasteful. Captain Jack obediantly apologized, proving that he is not one tough S.O.B. after all.

DailyKos Reeks of Anti-Semitism

There is plenty of anti-Semitic garbage on the internet, but when it appears on the most influential of all leftist blogs, the DailyKos, we need to confront it for what it is.

Today the DailyKos posted a piece entitled, "Why Isn't the U.S. Taking Action Against Israel?" in which it equated Israel with Iran. Members of the DailyKos call themselves Kossaks. (Do they realize that the Cossacks killed Russian Jews in pogroms?) Today's Kossak asserts:

our lopsided coddling of Israel gives birth to Arab and Persian resentment of the U.S. and helps spread radical Islam throughout the world. How can the United States tell young Arab and Persian men to resist the sirens’ call of the Extremist Clerics when all they see from the United States is a supposed democracy that enables Israel to engage in the Nazi-like Ghettoization of the Palestinian people and to attack any country it pleases, unprovoked, without consequences? (Emphasis added.)

That is not a misquote: DailyKos actually said that the Israeli's are "Nazi-like."

Today's post was by no means an anomaly. The DailyKos's anti-Semitism is so pronounced and recurrent that one of its Jewish writers previously quit in protest.

Perhaps their ugliest display is the piece "Eulogy before the Inevitability of Self-Destruction: The Decline and Death of Israel." It includes the old "blood libel" -- that Jews sacrifice Gentile children to use their blood for rituals. That rumor was used to justify pogroms in Russia as well as the Holocaust.

The DailyKos included another tale that I had not hear before: that the Israeli Mossad conspired with the CIA to assassinate J.F.K. in order to make U.S. policy more pro-Israel.

Every year, the DailyKos holds a convention. "Progressive" politicians, like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton flock to it in order to shore up their standing among the so-called "netroots." If Obama really wants to bring "hope" and "change," he must start by denouncing the anti-Semitism of the DailyKos

H/t: Little Green Footballs

Horne asks Nutroots for Help

Andrew Horne continues to demonstrate that he is not your average Democrat. Now he's turned for help -- money and bodies -- from the Daily Kos. For those who've never bothered to read it, the Daily Kos is the voice of the far-left fringe of what used to be the party of Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy. These so-called "netroots" are the voice of Democrats unhinged, including Moveon.org, Michael Moore and Howard Dean. Horne hasn't just appealed to the Nutroots for help, he's actually blogging for them.

First, Horne begs for money:

[S]ince there is no more tenacious force in politics today than the Netroots, I need your help to win.

Right now, the biggest problem facing our campaign is money. The DSCC wants to sit this race out, either by supporting a self-funder (because, when you’re running against a guy with as many big-money donors as McConnell, the first thing you want to do is trigger the Millionaire’s Amendment and raise his contribution limits!), or by simply ignoring this race and giving McConnell a pass.

Then Horne pleads for bodies:

Second thing we need is to organize our supporters. We’re facing one hell of a fight, and we need to marshal our strength and focus our energies if we’re going to succeed. To that end, I’ve brought on two Kossacks to help with that effort, Colin Bishopp and JR Lentini. The first thing they wanted me to do is ask those of you who want to help us beat McConnell to join our new Google Group, Netroots for Horne.

Horne acknowledges that he faces a primary, but miscounts the number of opponents: "We do have a challenger in the primary, and we’re going to have a difficult campaign in the general." (emphasis added).

No, Andrew, you have three opponents and counting.

Horne promised to blog on a regular basis. He has plenty of inspiration; he located his headquarters between a comic book store and a liquor store. If Horne starts pretending he has superhero powers, we'll know where he's getting his material.

Daily Kos Gnashes Teeth Over Crit

There is much weeping and gnashing of teeth at the Daily Kos, the left's national blog, over Crit Luallan's decision not to run against Mitch McConnell: "Luallen would likely have been our strongest candidate for the seat, and losing her is a major blow to our chances of defeating McConnell next fall."

Here's the Daily Kos's take on the rest of the field.

Horne has an impressive bio (which includes serving on the board of advisers of VoteVets), but has never held elected office, his name recognition is limited outside of KY-03, and he lost in the Democratic primary in his Congressional race last year (to future Rep. John Yarmuth).

Mongiardo was only elected to his new job in November, and it would look pretty bad for him to declare his candidacy for Senate before even being sworn in as Lieutenant Governor.

The Daily Kos dismissed a Stumbo candidacy, noting that Stumbo has said he may seek his old job in the Kentucky General Assembly.

In sum, "[w]ith Luallen out, we currently don't have a top-tier candidate for this race."

For the Daily Kos, Crit's decision not to run is particularly embarassing given that this national blog infuriated local liberal blogs by backing the draft-Crit movement.