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It has bothered me that many Coleman and NRSC ads attacking Franken use clips of Franken verbally denouncing the tactics used by many Republicans. It’s a bit twisted. For example, at a Howard Dean fundraiser, Franken talks about how “shameless” these people are and Coleman and the NRSC turn around and shamelessly use the clip to say something else. Another clip shows Al Franken asking Michael Medved “to apologize” because Medved was lying on the air. They turn it around as if people should be upset that Franken asked someone to apologize for lying. If only all these little clips Coleman and the NRSC used showed the whole context — it would certainly work against them.

Lately they’ve been using clips and photos referencing Paul Wellstone.

First, this still:

It appears in Coleman’s “Watchdog” and “No Accountability Al” ads and is from this photo by Gregory Bull/Associated Press:

Out of all the possible shots of Franken, this one predominately features the popular photo of Wellstone. That photo is the cover of “Twelve Years and Thirteen Days: Remembering Paul and Sheila Wellstone.”

In the NRSC ads “Unfit,” “Too Far” and in a few other spots there’s clips of Franken shouting “you can take this guy, you can take him! You can take this guy!” with his right arm swinging a bit. Out of context, they construe this to mean Al’s “angry.” In fact, it is the contrary. Franken is retelling a story by imitating Paul Wellstone. As many people that have heard Franken know, it’s a story about Wellstone’s son David when he was running cross country. Wellstone sometimes would run along side David and shout, “you can take this guy! You can take him, you can take this guy!” It’s a story about Wellstone’s tenacity. It’s a story about having someone run alongside you. It’s not about anger at all.

MinnPost has a nice bit about the story Franken retells:

Franken got ‘em with an uncanny imitation of the late Paul Wellstone. 

Franken told the Minnesota delegates about a conversation he recently had with the late senator’s son, David. It seems that when David was in high school, he was a cross country runner. His father would run along with him and near the end of races, when David was exhausted and 20 feet behind the leader, his father would go into high gear. 

“You can take this guy!” Wellstone would yell with passion.

Franken did a perfect imitation of Wellstone. His arms waving, his head bobbing, his voice turning Wellstonian, Franken told the crowd, “We can take this guy!” As the early-morning crowd yelled its approval, Franken said, “I’m takin’ Norm Coleman.”

So how did the Coleman campaign get the NRSC to coordinate on this? Well, actual coordination would be illegal but what they can do is to contribute to NRSC’s “tracker dump” site. Video sent here is essentially like asking the NRSC to do an ad about the content being uploaded. Here’s three clips that were uploaded to the NRSC:

 
Those clips of Franken imitating Wellstone captured by trackers in Minnesota were then used in NRSC anti-Franken ads.

I understand in this race that using Franken’s comments out of context is par for the course for the right-wing but I’m starting wonder how much intent there is to use all these Wellstone references in their attacks.