ch: Read This!

St. Paul Pioneer Press on Mark "Happy Feet" Kennedy

Read this: Mark Kennedy’s ‘happy feet’ are troubling

A voter who makes the mistake of watching televised political ads would come to the conclusion that the Republican congressman from Minnesota’s 6th Congressional district is a moderate, middle-of-the-road fellow who sings kumbaya as he bear-hugs his political foes.

We suspect he’s got happy feet.

U.S. Rep. Mark Kennedy has been, by most measures, a stout-hearted defender of his party, the Republican president and the war in Iraq. Nothing wrong with that. A lot of voters count that as a point in his favor, and he has been re-elected to Congress twice by healthy margins. [...]

An analysis of voting records by a respected Washington publication, Congressional Quarterly, shows Kennedy has been a reliable vote for the Republican president. Kennedy’s “presidential support’’ measure in the critical years of 2003 and 2004 — think Iraq and Bush v. Kerry — was an earth-shattering 98 and 97 percent. Only in 2005, after he had become a statewide candidate, did his numbers fall off. But even then, his support for Bush was stronger than that of the average House Republican.

I’ll admit it—Mark Kennedy’s campaign ads are very good, but only if the viewer doesn’t know the truth about his voting record (including that he’s a Republican Congressman, something he rarely mentions these days). And oddly enough, that seems to be Kennedy’s strategy: reaching people who don’t know anything about him.