Watching Crossfire and other shows last night as they discussed the New Jersey Supreme Court’s decision to let Frank Lautenberg replace Robert Torricelli on the ballot there, the Republicans on the shows kept hitting at one theme — Lautenberg is too old.
That is generally such a lame argument (and likely to be unsuccessful) that it was perplexing the Republicans were using it. Fortunately the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz comes to the rescue in a look at whether or not Republicans might make Torricelli and the switcheroo the focus of their campaigns in much the same way that Democrats successfully made Newt Gingrich their focus a few years ago.
It turns out that when Lautenberg first ran for the Senate in 1982 (and won), he made incumbent Senator Millicent Fenwick’s age a major issue in his campaign. Fenwick was 72. Lautenberg is 78.
Along with continuing to hit on corruption and Democrati backroom deals, challenger Forrester should simply run TV ads featuring nothing but quotes from Lautenberg about Fenwick being too old.