GOPers Attack 12-Year Old to Show "Family Values"

A couple of weeks ago, during the debate over the expansion of the federally-funded children's health insurance program, SCHIP, a 12-year old named Graeme Frost delivered a brief Democratic radio message in support of the program. He told about how he and his sister were covered by SCHIP after sustaining life-threatening injuries in a car accident.

Apparently desperate to back up Duhbya's veto of the bill expanding SCHIP and aware of the program's great popularity, a bunch of GOP shills decided that the right next move was to attack the Frost family, rather than the program they supported. As this article from the Baltimore Sun explains, the counter offensive began on the right-wing blog RedState, with such comments as:

If federal funds were required [they] could die for all I care. Let the parents get second jobs, let their state foot the bill or let them seek help from private charities. ... I would hire a team of PIs and find out exactly how much their parents made and where they spent every nickel. Then I'd do everything possible to destroy their lives with that info.

and:

'Hang 'em. Publically,' the contributor wrote. 'Let 'em twist in the wind and be eaten by ravens. Then maybe the bunch of socialist patsies will think twice.'

Junior detectives from RedState quickly assembled some half-baked facts about the Frost family (including their home address, which was published on the blog) that they thought proved conclusively that the Frosts were just wealthy liberals gaming the system.

Unfortunately, they were completely wrong, as the Sun article explains. But that doesn't matter. Reliable GOPer organs such as Michelle Malkin, National Review Online, and Rush Limbaugh. At least one Democrat has actually noticed this latest outrage:

Pelosi fired back yesterday.

'I think that the attack on this family is just breaking new ground and stooping to new lows in terms of what happens in Washington, D.C.,' she told reporters. 'I think it's a sad statement about how bankrupt some of these people are in their arguments against SCHIP that they attack a 12-year-old.'

For the record, I think using kids as political props is disgusting and both parties would be well served to swear off them (remember Duhbya's "snowflake kids"?) and the Dems should have used someone else to do the address. Also, for the record, I think it's perfectly acceptable to think SCHIP is a bad program on practical or philosophical grounds and don't equate all folks who think that with the jacknuts like Malkin and Limbaugh.

For more on this sorry spectacle, see blurbs over at Orcinus and DailyKos.