I think the term “swiftboating” is pretty overused in politics today, but here’s a clear-cut example of GOP Rep. Thelma Drake completely owning the vile tactic.
In two recent ads (see here and here), Democrat Glenn Nye has been touting his work to release an American hostage while serving as a foreign service officer in Macedonia. And here’s what Thelma Drake has to say about Nye’s service:
Drake wondered aloud how a “a very junior member of the State Department” was so instrumental in the rescues and said that so far, her staff had been unable to find news clips or State Department officials to verify the story Nye used on the campaign trail and in commercials.
That’s probably because her staff hasn’t been looking. Enough is Enough digs up a Virginia Pilot article from July 18, 2002:
And thanks to the contacts he’d forged with the Macedonian people and authorities living in the northern part of the country near Kosovo, where some of the fiercest fighting raged, Nye was responsible for evacuating 26 Americans during the height of the crisis.
He also secured the release of an American held by an armed insurgent group. For those efforts, he was awarded a “Superior Honor Award” from the European Bureau of the Department of State. He also got a meritorious honor award from the U.S. embassy in Skopje for his contacts and analysis of the ethnic Albanian political community.
The article is legit — I confirmed it with a Lexis-Nexis search. Drake’s been trying desperately to land a hit on Nye, but so far she’s been firing blanks. She was last seen questioning Nye for maintaining a D.C. residence while serving in Iraq, an attack that backfired with local media.
0 for 2, Thelma.