PA Pundit

This is leadership: Bringing strategic clarity to a debate that has been so confused by partisan spin and hyperbole that it’s hard to determine whether there is even a war going on, or with whom we might actually be at war.  Senator Santorum takes it away:

“We are at war with Islamic fascism,” Santorum argued while addressing the standing-room-only audience. “… And the principal leader of this Islamic fascist movement is Iran, led by a man named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”

Santorum also said that while he agreed with President Bush on many things, he parted ways with the President on how to explain the war to the American public. Bush has called it a war on terror, but “this is no more a war on terror than World War II was a war on blitzkrieg. Blitzkrieg is a tactic, it’s not our enemy.

Whether he’s in a reelection battle or not, whether you agree with his politics or not, this is the sort of principled insight to which all of our politicians should aspire.

“Terrorist attack is not our enemy,” he contended. “Our enemy are people who have ideology.”

“They’re in a holy war,” Santorum said of Islamic fundamentalists. “These people are after us not because we oppress them… but because we stand for everything they hate.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Todd Mason today picks up the pro-Sestak PA-7 Watch Blog’s Saturday talking pointsand runs them as a “news” report.  What happened that was worth a 6-column spread?  The “news” story is so littered with nonsequiters and barbs at the Weldon campaign that it takes a lot of reordering and editing to figure out what actually prompted this, but each of the following sentences is taken verbatim from the story:

Weldon’s campaign had been given an e-mail from MoveOn appealing for volunteer protesters, said Michael Puppio, his campaign manager.

Given the “occasional extreme quality of organizations like MoveOn, we thought it was prudent to notify law enforcement,” he said. That will be the Weldon campaign’s standard campaign practice, he said.

Expecting a demonstration by the liberal activist group MoveOn.org, Weldon’s campaign called the police to a campaign event Friday in Springfield, Delaware County.

The officer responding found only Ross Doppelt, 18, a campaign volunteer from Havertown for Democratic challenger Joe Sestak. 

When he didn’t find any marchers or placards, he approached Weldon’s staff, who pointed out Doppelt “as a possible protester,” said Police Lt. William Clark. “He wasn’t doing anything,” Clark said. The police wouldn’t intervene in a lawful protest, he said.

“I wasn’t completely sure why they came up to me and no one else,” Doppelt said of his meeting with Springfield’s finest.

Wow, stop the presses!  MoveOn threatened a protest of a campaign event, the campaign let the police know, and when only one volunteer showed up the police checked him out and moved on.

Interestingly, someone close to the Weldon campaign posted a comment (second one on the page) following the original PA7Watch blog entry with a different perspective:

This post and story is a bunch of utter crap. I was at the doctors event where Weldon was endorsed by doctors — becuase Sestak’s in the pocket of trial lawyers — and Weldon went up the the intern [Ross Doppelt], kindly introduced himself and told him he was welcome to stay as his guest. At no point did Weldon tell him not to audio record the event, although I believe one of the doctors made a blanket request at the beginning of the event to everyone in attendance.

On to yesterday’s event. The Weldon campaign received word that moveon.org may be planning to disrrupt the event through unknown means and local police were asked, in advance of the event, if they might drive by at some point just to ensure that no problems occurred between Weldon supportes and potentially unruly moveon.org members.

If the police said anything to the intern, it was of their own volition, unprompted by any member of the Weldon staff. I find it disgusting that the Sestak campaign would use an 18 year old to try to smear the Weldon camp in such a way, especially on such unfound charges. And I’m disappointed that the 18 year old would allow himself to be used as a pawn in this manner, especially given the respect Weldon has personally shown him. Where is the honor in that?

This was the third time this intern has been at a Weldon event in the past week and he has never been asked to leave and has been treated by our campaign staff with courtesy and respect. That’s more than I can say about how Weldon staff has been treated when they attempted to attend Sestak events at his campaign headquarters.

One other amusing feature of the Inquirer’s story is its trumpeting in the subhead and fourth paragraph that Ross Doppelt is an Eagle Scout.  And not in a bad way, apparently.  I imagine the Inquirer’s style guide on this subject reads something like: “Boy Scouts are to be derided at all times as homophobes, except when they are Democrats, in which case their membership in that conservative organization is to be trumpeted as evidence of their patriotism and civic credentials.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer today stepped up efforts to create a scandal out of what is, at worst, a little confusion.  Yesterday’s On the Campaign Trail included the following notes:

Republican blogs and aides to U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa.) sounded giddy last week as they passed around a commentary from a Web site, www.Al-Jazeerah.info.  [Note: The website is actually http://www.aljazeerah.info/]

“Don’t ask Santorum to ‘apologize,’ folks. Vote Democratic,” stated the commentary, which denounced the senator’s July 20 speech describing the United States as fighting a war on Islamic fascism, not terror.

Santorum referenced it himself Thursday on Fox’s O’Reilly Factor.

But there was one little wrinkle.

The Web site was not related to the Arabic TV network based in the Middle East – spelled al-Jazeera, no h.

The goal of al-Jazeerah, according to its Web site, is to “promote cross-cultural understanding between people all over the world.” It’s based in Dalton, Ga., not Qatar.

“Rick Santorum has reached a new low in gutter politics by trying to ridiculously link Bob Casey to terrorists,” Casey spokesman Larry Smar said.

So let’s see: Santorum supporters note an opinion piece written by an apologist for Islamofascism who attacks Santorum’s campaign and urges people to vote for Democrats.  And this is misleading how?

Oh, wait, it’s featured on a website bearing the same name as a Qatar-based news channel, but which is unaffiliated with said news channel.  A Casey spokesman, apparently assuming that al-Jazeera = Islamofascism = terrorism, expresses outrage that Santorum would suggest terrorists would vote for Democrats.

The Inquirer carries this “story” again today in an editorial under the subheading “Dumb and Dumber“:

A recent attempted smear by Sen. Rick Santorum and his reelection campaign had to have been done by someone who is dumb, or desperate, or both.

Santorum and his aides encouraged the notion that Democratic challenger Bob Casey Jr. had been endorsed by the Arab broadcast network al-Jazeera, based in Qatar. The source of this claim was an online op-ed that criticized a Santorum speech on “Islamic fascism” and urged readers to vote Democratic.

Team Santorum, and some bloggers, circulated the op-ed as evidence that a vote for Casey would be a victory for terrorists.

First off, equating al-Jazeera with terrorism is as silly as calling CNN an arm of the Republican Party. Just because you cover an organization and quote its spokesmen doesn’t mean you are identical to it.

Right, except that it was the Casey campaign that equated al-Jazeera with terrorism.  So who’s dumb, or desperate, or both?  Let’s keep reading, maybe the Inquirer can make this look even more scandalous.

But, wait, it gets much better. The op-ed actually came from a Web site called al-Jazeerah – that’s with an “h” – based in Dalton, Ga. The Georgia online operation says its goal is to promote cultural understanding.

In shopping this story around, the Santorum campaign was either careless or malicious. Even more obnoxious was their refusal to apologize for the error.

Again, what’s the error?  The fact of the matter is that a pro-Islamofascist essay referencing a speech by Santorum appeared on a website called aljazeerah.info and encouraged people to vote for Democrats.  If Santorum thought or suggested that this Georgian al-Jazeerah is related to the Qatari al-Jazeera he was obviously mistaken, but that’s beside the point.  And, contrary to what the Inquirer’s editorial board would like to believe, it makes him neither dumb nor desperate.