Who is Larry Sabato?
OK, I'm cheating. I actually know who he is and you probably do too, but Barry Casselman told me a few weeks ago that when he self-Googles, Polinaut comes up pretty high. It's a cheap trick, but I'm not above such things.
Now then, Larry Sabato, political commentator, has apparently gotten himself into the middle of the Virginia Senate race by suggesting that George Allen uses -- or used -- the "n" word.
Now the righty blog, Sixers, at the National Review is suggesting that if Sabato knew that, he hid it from a 2000 debate he moderated between George Allen and Chuck Robb, but dropped it in the middle of the current campaign.
Specifically, I guess, on Hardball last night.
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Well as you know and anybody who has followed politics recently knows, he had a long love affair with the confederate flag and other symbols of the confederacy, which frankly was a bit odd for somebody who grew up in an upper middle class family with every possible privilege in southern California. It was an unusual love affair.
OK, that's an interesting opening shot, but this is way over the top, even for political commentators, on the subject of the "n" word.
SABATO: I can‘t say how frequently he did it, but I don‘t believe him when he denies never having done it.
Now, Sabato isn't the first political commentator to make himself the center of a campaign (hello, Robert Novak) and Chris Matthews isn't the first talk show host to completely boot his responsibility to ask, "oh, yeah? When?" or even something like "prove it."
This one has dirty trick written all over it.
Update 4:19pm - National Journal has a little more on what's between Sabato and Allen.