It is truly insufferable to read the dishonest slime that Patrick Murphy's supporters continue to post on this site and elsewhere.  I had decided to ignore the sleazy crap they keep on slinging, but sometimes it is just too much to bear (see the current diary entry by "Jake Feinberg").  And of course, they never identify theirr connection to the Murphy campaign.  I'd like to see Patrick disavow this disgusting nonsense, but I suspect that's too much to hope for.

Yes, it is an inconvenient truth for Murphy's supporters that Andy Warren is the more progressive candidate in this race (e.g., choice, single-payer health care, and perhaps we'd find a lot more if Patrick actually took some specific policy positions).  So they find it necessary to pull out decades-old quotes to try to smear Andy with, including the intentionally-cropped one about supporting some of Pres. George H. W. Bush's policies (not that Andy voted for Bush's re-election; he didn't).  The fact is that THEIR candidate voted for George W. Bush in 2000.  I guess that's another inconvenient truth.

Not only that, but Patrick Murphy's initial reaction to the invasion of Iraq was to PRAISE our glorious President's leadership.  In print.  This is from Captain Murphy's bi-weekly column in the West Point publication known as Pointer's View:  "I believe President Bush and our leadership have a dream -- a free Iraqi people.  Let's hope that we keep up the successes of implementing our Commander-in-Chief's plan so that the Iraqi people see freedom is not just a dream but a reality."

I've stood by and listened to a lot of the nonsense being written here about Patrick Murphy and Andy Warren in PA-08, but it's really gotten to be more than I can tolerate silently.  First of all, I'd like to know about exactly what connection sem1480 has to the Murphy campaign (and the rest of you as well), but I will tell you right off that I am the Finance Director for Andy Warren's campaign, and I am most decidedly NOT a Republican.  I have never voted for a Republican and I never will.  I organized my college campus for McGovern before most of you were born, and a month before I started working for Andy Warren I was in San Antonio working on the Rodriguez campaign (this was before the blogswarm and before most of you ever heard about TX-28), and sleeping on the couch in Ciro and Carolina's family room.

That being said, I'll just focus on Andy Warren and Patrick Murphy.  I frankly don't understand where you all got the idea that Patrick Murphy is the "true progressive" in this race.  Patrick is quite capable of parroting customary progressive boilerplate in his public appearances (not very articulately, but that's another story), but as to whether Patrick Murphy has a carefully-considered belief system that coincides with what you, I and most other progressive Democrats believe, I couldn't tell you. I certainly believe that he is sincere in his opposition to the war in Iraq, but so is Andy Warren.  On other issues Murphy has very little specificity.  

On one issue, however, Patrick Murphy does have a specific set of beliefs, but he is attempting to ease his way through the Primary without having to expose them to his supporters.  That issue is choice.  While his website declares, "Patrick Murphy is pro-choice!", in fact Murphy has stated in at least one public appearance (before the Middletown Democrats) that he is "98% pro-choice".  As to what that means, Murphy says that he supports a ban on so-called "partial birth abortion" (with an exception only to save the life of the mother) and also supports certain kinds of parental notification laws.