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Holy Joe has brought in veteran GOP operative Dan Senor in order to try and pump up his numbers regarding his awful war by dragging in veterans to swiftboat Lamont. Never mind the fact that Lamont beat Lieberman  amongst veterans in the primary (it seems those whom Joe has dispatched to risk their lives in his catastrophic war don’t think it’s quite worth it simply because Sore Loserman can’t admit he was wrong wrong wrong).  Holy Joe, however, doesn’t want to get his white-gloved hands any dirtier with this business than he does with, say, actually fighting his own war:

The ad featured a photo of soldier Josh Clark, 24, of Willimantic, who was wounded in 2003 in Iraq, along with a quote attributed to Clark: "Senator Lieberman stood with me and my fellow veterans, and I am proud to stand by him."

The paid message was placed by the Virginia-based Vets for Freedom Action Fund, established last month under Section 527 of the federal tax code as a nonpartisan organization "to communicate with the public on veterans’ issues and the war in Iraq."

The group has high-level Republican connections. It has used a public relations firm that includes Taylor Gross, a former White House official, and receives volunteer advice from GOP strategist Dan Senor.

But its executive director, Iraq war veteran Wade Zirkle, said its members are both Democrat and Republican and its main issue is whether someone is "simply pro-mission or anti-mission," referring to the U.S. mission in Iraq.

The ad surfaced on a day when White House spokesman Tony Snow would not commit himself on whether Republican President Bush would support Alan Schlesinger, Connecticut’s Republican nominee, in the three-way race with Democrat Lamont and independent candidate Lieberman.

"The president supports the democratic process in the state of Connecticut and wishes them a successful election in November," Snow said. He was asked if Bush was holding back because he likes Lieberman or because Schlesinger is far behind in polls. "There may be a whole host of reasons …," he began, adding: "I think that there are some peculiar characteristics going on in the Republican Party with the Republican candidate, and why don’t you wait and see what happens?"

Snow’s comments followed Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman’s refusal, on Sunday’s NBC-TV news program "Meet the Press," to say if he supports Schlesinger. Mehlman said he consults "our leadership in the states – and what my leadership in the state has said to me is: `You ought to stay out of this one.’" So, he said, he is focusing on U.S. House races and the governor’s race in Connecticut.

As Taylor says, this raises some interesting questions:

Funny how Dan Senor’s group is listed as a 527, but is doing highly partisan work. Does anyone actually believe that by siding with Lieberman against Ned Lamont the Swiftboaters for Freedom are being non-partisan? It’s especially interesting given information I was handed this morning. Senor’s group didn’t even file their papers until the very end of July, wherein they signed on as a 527, which is not supposed to use any funds to directly defeat a candidate. Yeah, right. 

 Last week Holy Joe was all but parading around in a Donkey suit to prove what a devoted Democrat he was.  This week he’s all about reach-arounds from the GOP (I think the word they’re using is "bipartisanship.")   But bipartisanship seems to be synonimous with Republican worship as far as Loserman is concerned, because there doesn’t seem to be any love for Bernie Sanders, whom Joe’s campaign is currently painting as a Commie Bastard in a curious bit of atavistic red-baiting.

I’m glad Bubba put his foot down over this, but really, it should only be the beginning.  Loserman has shown himself willing to divide the party based anything that suits his purposes, and his new GOP paramours are more than willing to use his callow, bruised ego in their service.  As Christy and Bob Geiger noted this morning, the DSCC’s Mark Pryor needs to have his chain yanked HARD for giving cover to this nonsense.  You can join with Kossaks in raising an appropriate stink here.

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