Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

North Carolina Democratic Rep. Bob Etheridge lost his re-election bid in part because of this video from last June:



Two "college students" went after Bob with a camera to harass him, and when he blew his stack, it was all caught on film. 

Only now after the election, we find out that those two "students" were in fact GOP operatives who went after Etheridge with the express intent of provoking the reaction you see here, the admission copped to in the NY Times.

They also tried to push Democrats into retirement, using what was described in the presentation as "guerilla tactics" like chasing Democratic members down with video cameras and pressing them to explain votes or positions. (One target, Representative Bob Etheridge of North Carolina, had to apologize for manhandling one of his inquisitors in a clip memorialized on YouTube. Only this week did Republican strategists acknowledge they were behind the episode.)

It gets better.

The video, which first showed up on Andrew Breitbart's Big Government website, showed two college-age kids approaching Etheridge, a North Carolina congressman, on the streets of D.C. last June. They asked him if he supported Obama's agenda, and he inexplicably went into Charles Bronson mode, grabbing one of them by the neck and pulling him into a very uncomfortable and threatening hug. The mystery of who Etheridge's antagonists were—they never identified themselves on the video, despite Etheridge's creepy incantation of "Who are you?" over and over again, and their faces were blurred out—was a brief parlor game at the beginning of the Tea Party summer.

The Democrats immediately accused the kids of being GOP operatives sent to incite democratic congressmen into embarrassing themselves on camera as part of a deliberate and calculated campaign. The Republicans denied it—according to Dave Weigel at the time, "every party committee and conservative group in D.C. was denying knowledge" of the video.

That's right folks, this all goes back to our old "responsible journalist" friend, Andrew Breitbart.  The GOP provoked the reaction and the video surfaces as a Breitbart exclusive.  Just like ACORN, just like Shirley Sherrod, you can add Bob Etheridge to the heads Breitbart has collected.

Anything on his site has to be considered suspect.  The larger problem is of course that the GOP and Breitbart will continue to get away with this, as there's no punishment meted out for stuff like this, only rewards.