Not Playing Faaair

by digby

That commie bastard Al Franken broke the rules. He actually had the temerity to introduce a bill that made Republicans look bad when they voted against it. Somebody’s going to have to talk to that guy. That’s very uncivil.

When Al Franken ran for the Senate last year, the former “Saturday Night Live” star had to reassure skeptics that the fierce partisan attacks he lobbed at Republicans as an author and radio host wouldn’t define his style as a legislator.

But because of one of his first pieces of legislation, Democrats now have their most brazen attack line of the emerging 2010 campaign season: that Republicans are insensitive to rape victims.

The charge stems from a Franken-sponsored amendment that would prohibit the Department of Defense from contracting with companies that require employees to resolve workplace complaints — including complaints of sexual assault — through private arbitration rather than the courts.

Is the “charge” wrong? Are those Senators not insensitive to rape victims? It’s quite obvious that they are.

The good news is that the Republican senators have learned their lesson:

Privately, GOP sources acknowledge that they failed to anticipate the political consequences of a “no” vote on the amendment. And several aides said that Republicans are engaged in an internal blame game about why they agreed to a roll-call vote on the measure, rather than a simple voice vote that would have allowed the opposing senators to duck criticism.

Right, they forgot to hide their misogyny. (Man, you let your guard down for one minute and those bitchuz are all over you.)

Politico seems to agree that this was all a matter of bad politics — for Franken especially. See, the Republicans may have left themselves open to criticism by going on the record against rape victims when they could have been against rape victims in secret but Franken is the one who made the really huge error in bringing up this issue at all. Apparently people in Minnesota are super nervous that he’s going to embarrass Republicans.

And the Republicans are shocked, simply shocked:

“I think the whole purpose of that amendment in my opinion was to create a vote which they could use to attack Republicans,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who was himself confronted by a liberal blogger with a video camera questioning his vote.

If only they were that good.

By the way, Politico mentions several times that a “liberal blogger” got Republicans on tape behaving like jackasses on this issue, but can’t be bothered to name him or link to his site. Very nice.

It was, of course, the redoubtable Mike Stark, and you can help support him by signing this petition

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