From the Note

Echoing Kate O'Beirne on "Capital Gang," and many others, Fred Barnes writes on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal : "In a year of bitter Senate races, Mr. Wellstone had a cordial relationship with his GOP opponent, Norm Coleman. Mr. Coleman, after all, was a Democrat until 1998 and voted for Mr. Wellstone the three previous times he'd been on the ballot in Minnesota, including a losing race for state auditor. This year Mr. Coleman described Mr. Wellstone as a liberal far out of the mainstream."

The truth is, Coleman's campaign was based almost completely on destroying Wellstone.

Mort Kondracke and Barnes on "Fox and Friends" this morning sort of tittered their way through making the accusation that Democrats have somehow invented the notion that Coleman was running a negative campaign against Wellstone, and that Democrats were saying this to help Mondale.

You can argue that there is nothing wrong with negative campaigns; you can argue that Wellstone and his allies were running their own negative campaign against Coleman; and you can argue that Coleman (and the White House) didn't have 100-percent control over the allied groups' negative attacks on Wellstone.

But how all these conservative voices have come up with this talking point is completely beyond us. Unless some central Republican voice is spreading that message …

Well, duhh. On a related note, this has to win the Bad Timing of the Year Award.


A piece of literature attacking Sen. Paul Wellstone's support of the estate tax, featuring a large tombstone and the letters "R.I.P.," was mass-mailed last week by a lobby group for small businesses.

[..]
On the flip side, the mailing urges recipients to "Tell Paul Wellstone His Votes are Killing You." The copy also says, "Paul Wellstone's taxes can even reach you even in the grave