This isn't the first time the GOP turned a Franken photo into a Frankenphoto

[sandensea]

Many on DU might recall this incident involving Matt Drudge.

This particular alteration took place in May 2009, at the height of the MN senate race recount - and only a month before the edits done to the Tweeden photo currently in the news.

https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2009/05/04/drudge-smears-joker-franken-with-doctored-photo/149789

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. The 2008 Senate election was the most vicious one I've ever seen in MN.

The campaign ads on behalf of Norm Coleman were the nastiest, most below the belt smear jobs that I've ever seen - we hadn't previously seen a lot of that sort of ad in Minnesota, where elections have historically been pretty clean and civilized. But Norm "The Weasel" Coleman had the backing of the RNC and the help of Karl Rove, plus plenty of PAC money - and the GOP was determined to keep that Senate seat (which Coleman had in the first place only because a plane crash killed Paul Wellstone in 2002). The anti-Franken ads were mostly about his career as a comedian and his raunchy jokes. They turned over every rock they could find; they went back years to find the worst examples, even though Franken had already admitted he'd written and delivered some pretty x-rated stuff over the years.

But even with the aid of Karl Rove and unlimited GOP PAC money, for some reason the Coleman campaign never found out about the Tweeden incident - or, for that matter, of any other instance where anyone claimed to have been groped, fondled or otherwise harassed by Franken. This suggests to me that there weren't any such incidents, which might be why Franken himself asked for an ethics investigation.

[sandensea]

4. Republicans can always be counted on to make everything about pettiness, not issues.

Thanks for the primer on the 2008 MN Senate race. Franken's victory was, to me, the most surprising of them all that year.

Let's hope he can make it through this. This has Roger Stone's ratfucking written all over it.

[murielm99]

11. I think he will make it through.

And a lot of the credit will go to the people of Minnesota.

My family comes from Minnesota. Not all of them live there any more, but when I was growing up only a few of us had left the state. I know those stubborn Swedes and Germans. If they want Al to be their Senator, nothing will put an end to that. They will dig in.

[ucrdem]

2. LOL, they can't blame this one on the Russians

but that doesn't mean they won't try.

[sandensea]

5. Roger Stone was almost certainly behind this.

So it wouldn't surprise me if Russian intelligence somehow collaborated on this - by making the doctored photo look more realistic, maybe? (though it's not really; the light on Franken is too different from the light on the rest of the room. I bet he was at some county fair, gesturing at pies or something like that).

[ucrdem]

6. I suppose it's possible.

I'm pretty skeptical about the Russia connection mainly because the dirty tricks they're accused of are exactly the stunts the GOP has been pulling since the studios killed Upton's Sinclair's gubernatorial campaign in 1934, and long before in fact.

https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/the-socialist-who-won-a-democratic-primary-and-the-dirty-hollywood-politics-that-sunk

[sandensea]

7. An EPIC reply - thank you for that.

We sometimes need to be reminded that GOP intrigue and sabotage goes back a very long way - the exact opposite of what Lincoln intended; but that's just how it goes.

[ucrdem]

10. Hey thanks.

This is going to be tricky for Franken but it's good to know that he's more or less prepared for it. What he was doing on a USO tour I don't know but it doesn't surprise me that it's coming back to haunt him. Hope he holds out.

[Denzil_DC]

3. Heh. Yeah, that one's been doing the rounds on Twitter etc. the last couple of days.

I'm sure the RW trolls posting it have no idea it's a photoshop.

Just so people don't have to click through to see what we're talking about if they don't want to, here it is:

[eppur_se_muova]

8. I believe this pic was posted years ago, with David Vitter's face ...

Note the 2015 date.

[Denzil_DC]

9. That's a blast from the past!

I was all "Was the Vitter scandal really only in 2015? It seems much longer ago." Then I checked, and it was in 2007. Long memories in Louisiana (though the diapers ended up being the least of his worries).

If it hasn't happened already, it could be repurposed for Trump or somebody, I guess.

There was also this one:

[Judi Lynn]

12. Really repulsive. They can never stoop low enough to suit themselves. n/t

[sandensea]

13. Roger Stone. The face - and backside - of today's GOP.