Time is ticking down for the Republican Party. With just six days until election day, Mark Dayton has an 85 percent likelihood of winning the election. Desperate, the Republicans tried one last time to gain some traction. Unfortunately, the attack fizzled out just as quickly as it started.

Lacking a better molehill to attempt to stretch into a mountain, the GOP settled upon a lit piece sent by the DFL in SD40. The piece attacked Dan Hall, the Republican challenger, for his support of Tim Pawlenty’s decision to throw over poor 30,000 Minnesotans off of health care. It accused Hall, a minister, of not standing up for the Christian values he professed to believe in. Here’s what it said:

Leaders of the faith community rallied against Pawlenty’s decision to demolish the health care system for our poor and elderly, admonishing him by saying “Don’t pass this off on God.” Preacher Hall remained silent following Pawlenty’s cuts, and now endorses Tom Emmer, who stands with Pawlenty in rejecting over $1 billion in federal aid that would extend Minnesota’s health care for the poor — choosing partisan politics instead of standing up for those who most need help. 

That seems fair to me. I don’t think throwing 30,000 of the state’s poorest citizens off of health care is the Christian thing to do. The GOP, though, jumped on the piece like a herd of desperate, starving jackals, determined to somehow turn it into a political turnaround for Tom Emmer. Bizarrely, they went off on the DFL and Mark Dayton, accusing them of somehow being “anti-Catholic.”

There’s only one problem with that. The Catholic magazine that first called the piece “anti-catholic” later retracted its statement, even apologizing for labeling it as such.

Update: DFL Ads Not Anti-Catholic….Just Confusing

The Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party has just responded to the ad that, at first blush, seemed anti-Catholic, to say the least, and which was picked up on several blogs—including this one.  It seems that it was not a hoax, as some suspected, but the first part of a two-page ad…

My apologies too, for the “anti-Catholic” label.  Still, the use of Catholic imagery (how many nondemoninational lay chaplains look like that?) was bound to be confusing.  ”Anti-wise,” as Grant Gallicho says, is more on the mark.  Anti-clear, too.

So there goes another GOP attack. It was baseless, like always. No doubt they were hoping to rile up the Dayton camp and force Dayton to make a mistake. They failed miserably. In fact, Dayton’s response was perfect:

“I believe the brochure’s picture showing a man of the cloth is inappropriate,” Dayton said Wednesday in a statement. “I believe that it is inappropriate to bring religion into a campaign as this image and others do.”

Dayton said, however, that the mailer was right to point out that leaders of the faith community have disagreed with Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s cuts to health care programs.

“The facts are that members of Minnesota’s faith community have been leaders in the fight to stop Governor Pawlenty from denying health care to the poorest and sickest Minnesotans,” Dayton said.

You’d better try again, guys. You have less than six days, left.