Edwards fiasco a sign

Not that I had even considered voting for John Edwards anyway, but how inept and out of touch do you have to be to hire a foaming-at-the-mouth extreme liberal like Amanda Marcotte (more here, here and here) of Pandagon to be your interface with the web world?

In her profanity-laced rants she managed to denigrate the Catholic Church, motherhood and the unjustly-accused Duke lacrosse players, among others. So far, bloggers have not yet confirmed that she turned her invective on ”truth, justice and the American way” (probably apple pie, too), but there had been some furious airbrushing along her blog trail.

Marcotte, of course, is free to write whatever she wants about whomever she wants…it’s not her fault that she was brought on board a Presidential campaign. You don’t blame a rabid weasel for being a rabid weasel: it is what it is. You just have to have the foresight to realize that perhaps it is not the best choice as the web-based image you want to present to the public.

Edwards’ campaign realized this, of course, after the blogburst of criticism was reaching its crescendo. Yesterday, she was canned…sent back to the minors where she can froth away, safe from the tender eyes of middle American. It was another nail in the Edwards coffin, though, another miscue in the inept campaign of the Trial Lawyer Who Would Be King.

I have to believe Edwards is a smart, if smarmy, guy. Law school and his rags-to-riches rise on the strength of flawed malpractice law require a modicum of intelligence. So how, then, could he make a boneheaded move like this? Is he removed from the day-to-day operations of his campaign or perhaps surrounded by a uniformly foaming-at-the-mouth campaign staff? Either way, it bodes ill for his prospects. To win the White House, you have to appeal to the vast sea of moderates in middle America. So while the howling juvenile passion of the extreme liberal can be invigorating, it is ultimately unappealing to those who will make the decisions in 2008.

The Edwards campaign, for whatever reason, mistook Marcotte’s blog hit-count for mainstream popularity…choosing numbers over message. It was a big mistake.

Update: She's baaaaaack! Breck Boy just doesn't know when to quit!