19-year-old Chris Jackson has been writing a blog called the Ford Report dedicated to electing Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. the next Senator from Tennessee for almost a year. On Tuesday, in a post entitled “Blogging For Bryant & NRSC Running Deficit Of Ideas; Resorts To Lying,” Jackson observed:

Once again, Blogging for Bryant and the NRSC are lying to Tennesseans by playing the liberal card on Congressman Harold Ford Jr.

However, the people of Tennessee are not going to bite. They know Harold Ford Jr. is a moderate Democrat who has it right when it comes to energy independence, balancing the budget, Iraq, securing our ports, family values, as well as many other pressing issues.

Instead of putting forth their own agenda and new ideas that will help the people of Tennessee and this nation move forward and get ahead in life, all the Republicans want to do is play the politics of destruction by continually attacking Harold Ford Jr.

They know they are running a deficit on ideas and know they can’t run on their own merits, so they go negative against the frontrunner.

…

On Wednesday, Republicans fired back, making ample use of scare apostrophes:

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) issued the following statement in response to Harold Ford’s “unofficial” blog’s preposterous charge the NRSC is “lying” about Ford’s liberal record:

“Congressman Ford has realized his record is too liberal to win statewide in Tennessee and thus his minions have resorted to calling those who bring attention to it ‘liars.’ Whether he is proud of it or not, Mr. Ford’s record is what it is, one well suited for a Memphis congressional district or statewide in Massachusetts, just not for Tennessee,” said NRSC spokesman Dan Ronayne. “It is unlikely Tennesseans will be electing someone to the left of Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton no matter how loudly and falsely Ford and his allies object.”

Certainly a coup for a blogger to provoke that kind of response from the NRSC. (I should really be attacking Dreier more often, apparently!) Interestingly, the NRSC quotes the following as “evidence”:

Presidential Support

(Member Profile, “Harold Ford,” Congressional Quarterly Website, www.cq.com, Acessed Febraury 1, 2006)
Quite intriguing, actually. What’s the deal with Hillary and Ted? Unfortunately, the Congressional Quarterly (which was, incidentally, “Acessed Febraury 1, 2006”. Damn kids interning at the NRSC this summer can’t spell!) is subscription only. Quite elitist, I’d say. My guess is it has something to do with comparing Senators to Congressman; the House of Representatives passes crazy legislation by comfortable margins all the time, legislation that even the President opposes. The Senate is a little more reasonable.

Lacking CQ, I’ll have to settle for a nifty website called Progressive Punch instead. Here are their rankings:

• Harold Ford, Jr. – Progressive Score: 78.40; Rank: 149/433
• Hillary Clinton – Progressive Score: 91.73; Rank: 10/100
• Edward Kennedy – Progressive Score: 95.69; Rank 3/100

That means Harold Ford, Jr. is 149th out of about 200 Democrats. Sounds pretty moderate to me.

One final note of disappointment. My Congresswoman back home, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, got beat for the number one most liberal spot by someone named Raúl M. Grijalva from Arizona.

Posted: 06|15|06 at 12:04 am. Filed under: politics.

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