Notice anything off about this Charlie Crist attack ad?
We did:
That’s a reference to this blog post I “wrote” in April, and if you click through you’ll see why I put “wrote” in scare quotes. The post consists entirely of two attributed blocs– one from the St. Petersburg Times reporting the probe, and the second from a response letter by the Rubio camp.
The alleged investigation has led to diddly squat. As a Rubio rep said at the time “There is absolutely nothing to this, [and] anyone who is looking into it or investigating will quickly come to the same conclusion.’’
But that, of course, is not the issue here. The issue is that it should have been obvious to everyone in the Crist camp that the attribution on this “headline” didn’t belong to either myself or National Review. It belonged to the Times.
Was this sloppy oppo-research by Crist staffers, or a (not so) subtle attempt to use NR’s imprimatur in the hopes of undermining Rubio’s support among conservatives? I suspect it’s the latter. But either way, it’s no good.