'Republican tactics,' oh, my!

For various reasons, I can't just wade in and do continuous daily current-news blogging, so there's no sense in my adding further derision to the mocking scorn now being heaped on Elliott "Had To Pay For It" Spitzer (a/k/a "Client Nine").

However, I will take note of Barack Obama's accusation that the Clinton campaign is using "Republican tactics."

Perhaps Obama meant to use "Republican" as a synonym for "successful" (and let's face it, most successful people are Republican), in which case he was merely saying that Clinton has staged an amazing comeback by using successful tactics.

But I'm pretty sure that wasn't what Obama meant at all. What he really meant to do was to use a cheap partisan smear against a member of his own party.

Democrats who attribute GOP political success to "tactics" are engaged in intellectual dishonesty, an effort to avoid discussing the failures of Democratic ideas, Democratic policies and Democratic politicians. If Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton had been successful leaders, if Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were innovative and effective legislators, then the Democratic Party would not be such a mess, and "liberal" would not have such negative connotations.

Democrats routinely use this "tactics" smear against Republicans -- e.g., accusations of "Swiftboating" and stealing elections -- as an aggressive means of explaining Democratic electoral failures. For Obama to use this "Republican tactics" smear against Hillary Clinton is a desperate low blow.