Shhh....the President is coming

The story goes on to report that the blog reporting the “scrubbing” of the website was wrong and that 72 mentions of “Bush” appear on Kennedy’s website. Changes made to the website were routine updates that were done regularly to post the most current material. Instead of that fact killing the story, however, Power Line noted that in spite of the blog account of Kennedy’s “scrubbing” of Bush from his website being reported as wrong, Chris Matthews still repeated the claim later on Hardball: “In Minnesota, the Senate race between Republican Mark Kennedy and Democrat Amy Klobuchar is a tough race. Seven months ago, the president went to Minneapolis to raise money for Kennedy's campaign…Now Kennedy seems to believe President Bush is a vulnerability, because this week Kennedy removed pictures of the unpopular president from his campaign web site.”

Power Line also noted that Sid Blumenthal evidently received the talking points too because he said the following at Salon the same week: “While the Senate was consumed debating the flag-burning amendment, Rep. Mark Kennedy, the Republican Senate candidate in Minnesota, was removing every mention and likeness of Bush from his campaign literature and advertising.” That was simply not true. It was certainly consistent with the previous messages though.

There has been a good bit of speculation over the past year, especially when the President’s poll numbers were at their lowest, that Republican candidates would be running from him in droves. It is now looking more likely that Republican candidates will instead follow the advice Hugh Hewitt gave in his book, Painting the Map Red, to run with the President on an agenda of strong themes like winning the war. Many have already begun to do just that. That does not mean that the Democrats’ talking points are going to be changing anytime soon, though.