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November 29, 2004

Democrats Smearing Ken Mehlman

So now the Democrats are launching a smear campaign against Bush-Cheney campaign manager Ken Mehlman, as Hindrocket over at Powerline alerts us:

Reader John Jensen alerted us to the fact that the Democrats have launched a whispering campaign against Bush-Cheney campaign manager and incoming Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman, alleging that he is a homosexual. Apparently this has been going on for a while, but far off our radar screen. The "evidence" that Mehlman is gay apparently consists of the fact that he is 38 years old and unmarried.

One Bill Berkowitz of "Working for Change" indulges in the usual sleaze:

The chair of Bush's reelection team and newly appointed head of the RNC isn't talking about his sexual orientation, but lots of other folks are.

While the GOP's latest wunderkind, Ken Mehlman, is having the time of his life addressing the Republican Governor's conference, sitting down with reporters and editors of several daily newspapers and basking in the afterglow of President Bush's November 2nd victory, the Internet is abuzz with rumors, innuendo, chitchat, and plain old Page-Six-type gossip about his sexual orientation.

While Mehlman has been more than willing -- both before and after the election -- to talk specifically about campaign-related issues, he has made his personal life off limits. By refusing to answer direct questions from reporters about his sexual orientation, he has left open the possibility that he is gay.

Likewise, the New York Blade speculates venomously about Mehlman's personal life:

The sexual orientation of Mehlman, who is 38 and unmarried, has long been the subject of speculation, and he refused to answer earlier this year when asked directly by this publication whether he or other top Bush campaign staffers are gay.

The announcement raises mixed emotions for me. I have known Ken since we were both law students and he worked for me at the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, a libertarian/conservative law review. As young Washington attorneys in the early ‘90s, we even joined with others to create an organization called Square One that advocated limited government.

There are plenty of reasons for Ken’s success. He is über-bright, extremely personable, and as dedicated as he is ambitious. Tapped to head the majority political party before he even turns 40, Ken has obviously mastered the art of politics, learning at the feet of the master, his mentor Karl Rove.

But the real disappointment for me comes at the path Ken has taken to find such success. I have not spoken to Ken in a decade, and I have no personal knowledge about his sexual orientation, but whether or not he is gay, he has ridden to success on the coattails of a candidate who betrayed the core principles that we both stood for as young political activists.

Got that? Mehlman has committed the ultimate sin--he isn't a liberal. So it's fair game to smear him in any way possible. Just when you thought the Democrats couldn't get any lower, they surprise you once again.

This doesn't surprise me at all. Swamp Fever Lefties in the Democratic party are notorious for doing this kind of smearing.

Berkowitz and The Blade have underscored for us that the Democrats are so devoid of any credible position on almost any serious issue facing the country, that their fringe elements have nothing else to latch on to than garbage such as this.

I am just not going to be worried or impressed with Democrats until they cease this type of pointless character assasination and come up with credible and respectable positions that the American people can once again embrace.

Posted at 11:11 PM Pacific