Mapes: Smith exaggerates in hitting Merkley on taxes

Continuing his excellent coverage of the U.S. Senate race in Oregon, reporter Jeff Mapes takes a big swing at Gordon Smith today for his gratuitous exaggeration of Merkley's record on taxes:

A couple of weeks ago, Sen. Gordon Smith told me that he expected taxes to become a bigger issue in his Senate race with Democrat Jeff Merkley.

"We'll see how people feel about raising taxes in an economic slowdown," he said. On Tuesday, the Smith campaign followed through with a new TV commercial that accuses Merkley of having "voted for higher taxes 44 times over ten years."

Notice the wording carefully. It doesn't say he voted to raise taxes. In fact, many of the votes that Smith references in his new ad are actually votes that Merkley cast against tax breaks for one group or another.

Mapes goes on to tick off a laundry list of specific votes and bills that Smith attempts to cite--smashing each with a rhetorical sledge while outing the blatant dishonesty of the Republican's latest TV ad.

Dishonest Republican? Sorry for the redundancy there.

Unfortunately, Mapes' excellent reporting on the ongoing efforts by the Smith campaign to prevaricate Merkley's record are sitting on his blog instead of getting column inches in the paper edition. One hopes that Mapes's gravitas will yield otherwise very soon.