Oops is now a campaign term

Raymond Hernandez has an article in The New York Times about the Senate campaign in Connecticut, which has some ugly charges flying about:

Just hours before the first formal debate in Connecticut’s United States Senate contest, the Republican candidate, Linda E. McMahon, released a new video showing her Democratic opponent, Richard Blumenthal, suggesting that he had served in the Vietnam War, even though he did not. The video the McMahon campaign obtained shows Mr. Blumenthal, the state’s attorney general, delivering an address that it says occurred in Bridgeport in 2003 to express support for American troops overseas. “When we returned, we saw nothing of this gratitude,” Mr. Blumenthal said.
The video of Mr. Blumenthal, who has been under fire for exaggerating his military record, was part of a thirty-second advertisement in which the narrator asks: “If he lied about Vietnam, what else is he lying about?” It was circulated on the Internet on Monday morning and was set to be broadcast by television stations later in the day, according to the McMahon campaign. The attack was unleashed as Ms. McMahon, the former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, was preparing to debate Mr. Blumenthal on Monday night in Hartford.
Republicans close to the McMahon campaign said the goal was to personally shake up Mr. Blumenthal, a once ubiquitous presence in Connecticut who has significantly curtailed his public appearances after The New York Times published an article in May describing how he had misrepresented his military service over the years.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Blumenthal, Mindy Myers, said Ms. McMahon’s ad was “another desperate attack from a losing campaign with nothing to say. Linda McMahon’s money can’t buy Dick Blumenthal’s genuine record of standing up and fighting for the people of Connecticut."
Mr. Blumenthal received five deferments as a young man that let him avoid having to serve in the war and, among other things, allowed him to travel abroad to study and to work in the White House. He then joined the Marine Corps Reserve, which was considered a haven from the war, in early 1970, when deferments had come under review by the Nixon administration.
Mr. Blumenthal has acknowledged that on occasion he has misspoken about his military service. But he has said that he never intentionally misled the public about his military record.
The video released by the McMahon campaign is the second video to surface publicly showing Mr. Blumenthal misrepresenting his military service during the tumultuous Vietnam era. In a video that surfaced earlier this year, Mr. Blumenthal is seen making a false claim about his military service while attending a 2008 ceremony in Norwalk honoring veterans. “We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal said in the video. “And you exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call it— Afghanistan or Iraq— we owe our military men and women unconditional support.”
The advertisement released on Monday by the McMahon campaign opens with the narrator asking: “Would you lie about serving in a war?” It then shows video clips of his appearances in Bridgeport and Norwalk before the narrator then intones: “Dick Blumenthal did. Again and again.”
The attack underscores the increasingly competitive nature of the Senate race in Connecticut. After holding a significant lead in the race, Mr. Blumenthal, who has been in office since 1991, finds himself, recent polls suggest, in a virtual dead heat with Ms. McMahon. The wrestling mogul has spent more than $20 million of her own fortune on the race. But Democrats have attacked her for her association with an industry they say is plagued with drug abuse, violence, and is demeaning in its treatment of women.
The race is drawing significant attention nationally because it is likely to play a significant role in the battle both parties are waging for control of the Senate.

Rico says if he'd just said 'Vietnam-era veteran', no one coulda bitched... (And 'demeaning in its treatment of women'? You mean, like politics?)