Friday, October 27, 2006

Webb's Book Means GOP Senate

As you may have seen, Jim Webb is preparing to answer questions about some of the sex scenes he's written in his novels. It includes some disgusting stuff. If you want to check it out for yourself, Wizbang has compiled them here, and they have more passages than Drudge does. Most people will find it tasteless, at best.

I am sure that Webb and his defenders will say that they're simply stories, and Webb will probably add that they are all things that he witnessed, or knew of during his military career. 'The horrors of war,' he will say. Be that as it may, this will toss the dirt on the Webb campaign, which was flagging anyway.

Politically, you wonder how Webb could be such a fool as to allow this to come up so late in the campaign, rather than getting it out there early. Did he not think that people would be surprised or react negatively, if they heard a week before the election that he had written stuff like this? Rule 1 in the political playbook is to get the negative stuff out early. Webb could have sat down with a sympathetic Washinton Post reporter, and gotten all this stuff out, along with his side of the story. He would have had months for people to forget about it.

Instead, he's now lost the race.

Check out Chris Dodd trying to change the subject, and saying how none of this matters:



BTW, as I now count it, the GOP is quite likely to lose Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Ohio and Montana (although perhaps there is hope in Montana). I feel very confident about Tennessee and Virginia. So even if the Democrats win Missouri - which sounds like a tossup to me, at this point - the GOP will still keep control of the Senate.

Update: Check out how the Washington Post has consistently done its best to trash Allen and Boost Webb. Wonder how they will treat this?

Back to the top.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"they are all things that he witnessed, or knew of during his military career. 'The horrors of war,' he will say. Be that as it may, this will toss the dirt on the Webb campaign, which was flagging anyway."

You admit that it there is no reason for this to be controversial. Yes, obviously anyone who understands the nature of the book will not be concerned. But a little well placed, out of context dirt is ok is if it gets more GOP power.

There is a time when disregard for truth comes back to haunt.

The Editor at IP said...

Thanks for your comment.

To clarify, I did not say that there is no reason for this to be controversial. I described what I suspected will be Webb's defense. It may or may not be true. Whether it is or not, does not mean that it's not sick to write about it.

And with regard to well-placed dirt coming back to haunt, Webb's entire campaign has been based on well-placed dirt. It started when he used anti-semitism against his primary opponent.

And it does indeed look like his dirty tactics have come back to haunt him. He lived by the sword; he dies by the sword.