Do Kaine's minions "wink-wink, nudge-nudge?"

Just before last year's elections Gerry Davies, editorialist for the New River Valley Current pullout of the Roanoke Times, wrote a column entitled "The politics of wink-wink, nudge-nudge" (Sunday, October, 31, 2004). Salt Lick thinks some passages of that piece are particularly relevant to recent efforts by Tim Kaine and his supporters to paint Jerry Kilgore as "ineffective and weak," or "weak" and "effeminate." For example, Davies wrote:

"So, Rick Boucher is 'just not straight with us.' He's 'leading a double life.' The Republican Party mailing list last week did everything but nudge us in the ribs and chuckle knowingly, 'Know what I mean?'

Yeah, we know what they meant: The 9th District's congressman for all these years bats from the wrong side of the plate -- if you know what I mean.

Not that the leaflet actually said that. No, it just tossed out a little loaded language, planting a suspicion about sexual orientation that could be politically helpful in this church-going, moderately conservative district."

Davies goes on to say he didn't get peeved about this until he read a Wall Street Journal article on voter-suppression.

"Maybe someone in [Republican candidate Kevin] Triplett's campaign thought a wink-wink, nudge-nudge insinuation about Boucher's sexuality would be enough to keep folks home here... That would explain why the leaflet's only lasting impression is made by the words 'double life' and 'isn't being straight.'"

Someone let us know if we've missed Gerry's condemnation of Kaine and his supporters' similar tactics. We'd certainly like to see Gerry condemn this kind of low road as have John at Commonwealth Conservative or Norman at "One Man's Trash. At the very least, can't we get a condemnation of mocking people's accents?

If we don't read something like this soon, we will be forced to "deep blog" on a vice of Gerry's that select New River Valley inhabitants already know about -- playing bagpipes.

Talk about high-pitched squealing.