Mehlman quote
(Photo with quote from Time magazine, Nov. 2004)

With the polls looking increasingly grim for the GOP, the highest-ranking deer in the NRA Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman has sent a talking-points e-mail urging supporters to pimp the recently passed torture bill, says Bob Geiger:

We expect a charlatan like Mehlman to depict the rubber-stamp, GOP Congress bowing to Bush's every whim as an example of how they "work together" -- no harm, no foul. That's his job.

But, of course, Mehlman didn't stop there. In the e-mail -- with a subject line of "Saving American Lives" -- the RNC chief conveyed to his GOP brethren that this law was a reason to not even consider voting for a Democrat in three weeks, saying the "Democrats in the House voted against interrogating terrorists."

He followed that incredibly misleading line of crap by declaring that Democrats in both the House and the Senate "voted against this bill out of concern for terrorist civil liberties" and asking his followers to "take a stand for a stronger America by doing everything possible to ensure that these Democrats aren't given even more power in Washington."

Okay, well, let's give Kenny M. some credit for a previously undiscovered sense of humor -- the notion of Democrats having "even more power" is pretty funny.  But the rest of the quotes are a hint of just how ugly and desperate Republican rhetoric is going to become in the closing weeks of the campaign... up to and including accusing all Democrats of being traitors.

If Mehlman is determined to sharpen the contrast between the parties by using lies, though, I have no problem with our side using the truth to return the favor. 

If I was on TV as a Democratic politician or talking-head pundit responding to Mehlman's smears, my reply would be simple: We think there's a better way to defend America than by torturing people.  (And the GOP can play as many word games with the Geneva Convention as it likes, but torture is exactly what the bill endorses.)

We tortured people at Abu Ghraib, and that didn't exactly win us the war in Iraq, did it?  And the unanimous opinion of our intelligence agencies in the NIE is that what we've done in Iraq may be causing us to lose the war on terror.

Losing in Iraq, losing the war on terror, and losing our American values isn't a good combination.  And that's why Ken Mehlman and the Republicans are going to wake up on Nov. 8 after losing an election.  They're losers, and the American people have had enough of them.