They eat their own (Repub push polling)

This gave me a good chortle this afternoon while trying to make it to the weekend.

http://www.npr.org/...

Nothing new or, sadly, suprising here. Just a quick story about how ingrained certain smear tactics are in South Carolina (and really, by inference, throughout the country). The focus of the story is on how nasty repub candidate hopefuls are to each other this year, especially via the use of push polling:

Those who say they are voting for former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson in Saturday's Republican primary were then asked this question:

"Does the fact that former Sen. Fred Thompson refuses to sign the no new tax pledge, and that Gov. Huckabee supported the Bush tax cuts and is supporting a fair tax reform, make you more likely to support Gov. Huckabee on the issue of tax relief?"

Of course Huckabee, who I could've sworn hearing somewhere is an upstanding Christian and presumably knows at least a couple of the Commandments (isn't there one somewhere about false witness? could just be a rumor), goes on to say

To me, of all of the things that are done, push polling is the most offensive to me. I think it is just disingenuous.

and denies any involvement with push polling.

There is a brief bit trying to bring dems into the muck, referring to the emails referencing Obama as a muslim. Those emails have, of course, never been shown to be tied to a dem operation and it somes across as a weak point in the story, but, meh.

A later report by David Greene had people's reaction to push polling, including a scary guy who defended Huckabee by saying he (Huck) couldn't do anything about it (push polling).

I'm torn between the pure enjoyment of the mess that seems to be the republican candidacy these days, the sympathy for those republicans who are well meaning but caught in the middle of all that crap, and the growing dread that it won't be long before all of that deception and subterfuge will be turned outward, towards the eventual dem candidate. We may as well start girding our loins, it's going to be a long year.