Salon: GOP Tactics in Minnesota “Disgusting, McCarthy style”

While there’s little doubt that the Senate election in Minnesota has been attracting national attention for months and that the recount has only added to the media’s fascination with the race (see Jay Leno’s joke on the Tonight Show: “Minnesota is an old Indian word that means Florida”), the GOP’s increasingly nasty tactics had been flying under the national radar. I say “had been,” because it seems that they are getting too incredible to continue to pass off as mere “tactics.”

Salon, for example, currently has an excellent article up noting the direct correlation between the GOP’s desperation and the depravity of their tactics (emphasis mine…in all quotes below):

Evidently Coleman and his allies fear that his notional lead of less than one-tenth of one percent will evaporate if all the votes are counted. The stakes are high, of course (although perhaps not quite as high as conventional wisdom insists). That is why the barrage of propaganda about the aftermath of the Minnesota race has intensified and expanded far beyond its borders.

Salon also notes how the NRSC “issued a disgusting, McCarthy-style press release that sought to connect Mark Ritchie, the state official who will oversee the recount, with the Communist Party — not exactly Minnesota nice.”

The whole thing is worth the read (well, if you have a strong stomach; Coleman & Friends’ tactics are a bit nauseating), but here’s the real meat of it:

In any case, the Coleman camp is clearly worried and has turned up the noisemakers to discredit both the canvass and the recount. Nearly every movement of a few votes into Franken’s column has elicited shrieks of “fraud” from the incumbent’s friends. In each case, those shrill complaints have been thoroughly discredited by independent observers.

…

What is really happening as the votes are canvassed has little to do with the dark fantasies of the far right. When a Star-Tribune reporter visited a county office where precinct totals were under review this week, observers from both the Coleman and Franken campaigns endorsed the process as careful and fair. “I’m just watching like everyone else. It all seems pretty straightforward to me,” said Democrat John Stiles. A Republican volunteer named John Nygaard concurred: “It’s very transparent — I’m impressed. I didn’t realize how much work went into this.”

Neither does Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who has lent his good name and image to the false accusations on Fox. Perhaps the governor ought to simply do his job, which is to make sure that all the votes in Minnesota are counted and recounted accurately and fairly in accordance with the law. That is the least we should expect from a state with a reputation for decency and clean politics.