Mike Gehrke is the research director for the Democratic National Committee. A sharp-eyed Campaign Spot reader was looking at Gehrke’s Facebook page, and noticed yesterday a post in his Twitter feed.
The captured screenshot is below.
One particular comment that he twittered is enlarged below.
The 3:13 p.m. Twitter comment, “You know what you call someone who digs up dirt on John McCain? An archeologist.”
Ha-ha.
We can all chuckle at McCain’s age of 72; McCain himself has joked about how he’s “older than dirt and has more scars than Frankenstein.” I suppose at a certain age, a man gets confident enough to laugh at himself.
Of course, jokes like Gehrke’s don’t really mesh with earlier statements from the head of the DNC:
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said Thursday that his party is unlikely to make Sen. John McCain’s age an issue in the fall presidential election. The Arizona Republican will be 72 in August.
“I doubt we will bring it up in the election,” said Dean, dismissing the idea as a tactic Republicans might employ but Democrats never would. “There is somewhat of a higher ethical bar on what we do,” Dean said. “We don’t have any Lee Atwaters or Karl Roves on our side.”
(If you join Facebook, as I did a very short time ago, and search for “Mike Gehrke,” you see him listed, along with the networks, “Democratic National Committee Washington, DC”, along with the little logo of Schroeder from Peanuts.)
As far as unthinking comments on Twitter goes, Gehrke is no, say Ezra Klein (warning, foul language at that link). But Soren Dayton was suspended from the McCain camp for merely forwarding a link to a YouTube that had a controversial elements in it, regarding Obama and Jeremiah Wright. Is there any consequence at the DNC for telling “John McCain is old” jokes? Behavior that Dean has already deemed not in keeping with the “higher ethical bar” that they have on that side of the aisle?
I’m told that during the Pennsylvania debate, Gehrke posted a statement about Charlie Gibson on par with what Ezra Klein wrote about Tim Russert.
UPDATE: Got the screenshot. Be aware that he alludes to the F-word.
The DNC tells ABC News that he has been “reprimanded.”
For his spelling, apparently.