Well, not in so many words, but you have to laugh when Eric Boehlert of the far left Media Matters attack dog group tweets:
Behold “conservative journalism”: @andrewbreitbart‘s team digs up 20 yr old divorce records. Keep in classy guys; http://bit.ly/cYtkO0 10 minutes ago via web
The article in question, by Big Government’s Mike Flynn is titled, “Exclusive: Court Document Details Congressman’s Past Spousal Abuse;” Flynn writes:
Ohio Democrat Congressman Charlie Wilson was first elected to Congress in the Democrat wave year of 2006. Prior to that, he had been a long-time member of the Ohio state legislature, first elected to the Ohio House in 1996 and the Ohio Senate in 2004. (One of his four grown sons succeeded him in the legislature and is currently an Ohio State Senator.) He was also married for 27 years to his wife, Clara. The marriage ended in divorce in 1990.
BigGovernment has obtained a trial brief filed by Mrs. Clara Wilson prior to the formal divorce proceedings. The brief was filed November 9th, 1990. The brief is part of the public record and was obtained at Belmont County Court House in Ohio. (Other documents related to the divorce are sealed.) The brief, which is posted below, is shocking and details very serious allegations of spousal abuse. It states that the grounds of divorce are “extreme cruelty.”
Read the whole brief, but pay particular attention to the items highlighted between page 3-5.
Given their control over politics and the legacy media for most of the age of television, the left mastered the art of the October surprise, so it’s rather hilarious to see someone on the left like Boehlert decry the process. Back in 2003, a month before the L.A. Times’ late hit on Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Will noted:
Can the tone of the recall campaign get worse? Just wait. Ken Khachigian, a veteran Republican strategist, warns that Schwarzenegger should brace himself for what has become the Democrats’ trademark tactic. In football it is penalized as a “late hit,” but in politics it is often rewarded with success. George W. Bush received such a hit in the final weekend of the 2000 campaign — the revelation of his drunk driving arrest 24 years earlier. That probably contributed to an unusual development: Late-deciding voters, who usually break against the incumbent party, broke for Vice President Gore in 2000.California Republicans have experienced late hits three times in the past 11 years. In 1992 Bruce Herschensohn narrowly lost a Senate race against Barbara Boxer when it was revealed on the Friday before the election that he and his girlfriend and another couple had visited a strip club. In 1994 Michael Huffington narrowly lost a Senate race against Feinstein when, a few days before the election, it was revealed that he had hired an illegal immigrant as a nanny. In 1998 Darrell Issa — he is now a congressmen; his $1.6 million funding of the recall petition drive produced this recall election — lost a Senate primary when it was revealed that he had embellished his military record.
A late hit by the Davis campaign against Schwarzenegger cannot come so late that there is no time for another such hit, one against Davis’s other problem, Bustamante. This could get even uglier.
Last year, the left melted down over the hidden camera reporting on ACORN — using tactics pioneered by the liberals on CBS’s Sixty Minutes. This year, they’re unnerved by the ubiquitous Flip cams on the campaign trail — a strategy endorsed tacitly or explicitly by the Washington Post and Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos. So it seems rather late in the day to get the vapors over a late hit. But then, as Jonah once wrote:
Liberals are geniuses at unleashing social panics because A) it never occurs to them that their motives are anything but pure and B) because they are almost exclusively focused on short term tactics. And yet they are invariably shocked when these moral frenzies come back to bite them.
Although something tells me that Boehlert is shocked only in the Claude Rains in Casablanca definition of the word.
Update: Jack Ryan could not be reached for comment.
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