Via Brietbart:

Second Blogger Quits Edwards Campaign

A second blogger working for Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards quit Tuesday under pressure from conservative critics who said her previous online messages were anti-Catholic.

Melissa McEwan wrote on her personal blog, Shakespeare's Sister, that she left the campaign because she was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the level of attention focused on her and her family.

She was quite a bit more graceful then whiney blame shifting Amanda Marcotte (see here for my recent post on her), but she still only managed to get it half right.

"This was a decision I made, with the campaign's reluctant support, because my remaining the focus of sustained ideological attacks was inevitably making me a liability to the campaign," McEwan said Tuesday night.

She is right, she would have been a liability, but she misses the boat on blame.  She, like Amanda, is a victim of her own vitriol (or in liberalese, her great success).  When you rabidly attack a group and show your intolerance with bigotted outrageous statements, expect they will eventually call you to account for it, particularly when you are going to be closely associated to a presidential campaign.

Did you forget, the guy who hired you is undoubtably courting them as the huge voting block they are.

Campaigns have to limit exposure to things which bring them negative publicity.  Just as he would not willingly hire a rabid homophobe, or an anti-semite, he cannot afford to hire an anti-christian/catholic, at least one that is so dramatically over the top.  Though I bet the anti-semite would last longer.

In her case, I imagine her use of the word "Christofascist" was part of the problem. 

Hot Air sumamrizes it thus:

McEwan’s post contains a bit less blameshifting than Marcotte’s, the reaction to the latter’s announcement yesterday probably serving as a guide for what not to do. McEwan finishes on a note with which I agree. Mostly:

This is a win for no one.

Edwards’ rivals scored a big win through all this. He hired them and took no action to control the damage they were doing to his campaign. It’s a telling episode that will probably follow him through the primaries next year.

Among the blogs, what McEwan says is quite true. Edwards did himself no good by hiring those two; they did him no good by letting him. He looks like the weak and indecisive head of a dysfunctional campaign, and a willing prisoner of the worst the left has to offer. They discredited their own work in attempting to hang on to their campaign jobs, playing their readers and their allies and their boss for fools. And their readers and allies and their boss let them so that they might claim a hollow victory over us “godbags.”

This is indeed a defining moment for bloggers in some respects.  They have shown they are a force to be reckoned with and the campaigns see them, as a tool to be used.

But just as they can be a powerful ally in the realm of politics, those who use their blogs foolishly will find themselves to be cnsidered a liability just as easily.

Food for thought.

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