In yet another in a series of odd echoes between partisan conservatives and Sen. Clinton’s prez campaign, Karl “turdblossom” Rove has used the same weak spin as Hillary in attacking Sen. Obama. This line from Mr. Rove’s WSJ op-ed cracks me up:

 ”Mr. Obama has failed to rise to leadership on a single major issue in the Senate,” Rove writes in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed. “In the Illinois legislature, he had a habit of ducking major issues, voting ‘present’ on bills important to many Democratic interest groups, like abortion-rights and gun-control advocates.”

Curiously, honest conservatives have offered guarded praise to Sen. Obama for, in fact, rising to leadership on one major issue — transparency in government — thanks to a bill he sponsored with a Republican Senator and which Mr. Rove’s former boss signed into law. Sen. Obama has also, of course, taken on a number of lead roles on vital (even if sometimes unglamorous) issues, not the least of which includes securing and dismantling foreign nuclear arsenals in this age of international terrorism and black-market uranium. On both matters, Sen. Obama was in the minority party — an even more difficult proposition and all the more surprising that he got this work done.

In other words, just because Karl Rove is too partisanly ignorant to admit this doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. 

As for the last bit of Turdblossom’s bs, those very “Democratic interest groups” already have explained that Sen. Obama’s ‘present’ votes (as with the ‘present’ votes from others) was part of a concerted effort to thwart bad bills while also giving vulnerable Dem colleagues cover. It’s a non-issue once one takes the 5 seconds needed to … think about it. (Besides, if Sen. Obama was so off on those matters in the state lege, why’d his conservative detractors here in Illinois oppose his moves instead of questioning them as Mr. Rove is.)

How stupid does Turdblossom think Americans are? Such lame attempts at distraction didn’t work when Sen. Clinton tried them a month before Iowa. Does Turd think they’ll somehow work better now?

And how scared of Sen. Obama is Turdblossom that he felt compelled to publish this dreck?