Sleazy Politics

Such nonsense supposedly went out with the hula hoop, bobby sox and Sen. Joseph McCarthy: the idea of the National Republican Senatorial Committee writing guidelines for an attack on Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) as a one-time “Communist sympathizer” whose dangerous ideas have come to the floor of the U.S. Senate. The 72-page “Research Overview” of Metzenbaum was the brainchild of a staff member of the GOP Senate group, and was slipped to the campaign committees of two Ohio Republicans thinking of challenging Metzenbaum in 1988.

The report said that Metzenbaum had been “affiliated with several Communist causes” in the 1940s and that “a strong attraction to socialist values” was apparent in legislation that Metzenbaum had supported or sponsored in the Senate. The document suggested that Metzenbaum’s opponents use the material subtly so that they would not subject themselves to charges of McCarthyism.

Sen. Rudy Boschwitz of Minnesota, the GOP Senate campaign committee chairman, apologized to Metzenbaum, calling the tactic “insulting and outrageous.” But no action had been taken against the staff members responsible, one of whom has left the committee for other reasons.

The aides deserve to be disciplined in some way--and not just for perpetrating such a sleazy stunt, but for being stupid enough to think that they could get away with it. Metzenbaum is a sometimes-pesky liberal, but the notion of him trying to sneak socialist programs through Congress is ludicrous. Given the archaic nature of the smear, tar and feathers might be appropriate.