It made for an amusing read. VTDigger’s piece about Jim Barnett’s role in the Scott Milne campaign featured several Republicans doing verbal acrobatics as they tried to explain why the self-described moderate required the services of a political operator described as “a nasty guy,” a “hitman,” and “Mad Dog.” (The latter was bestowed on Barnett by the late Peter Freyne, grand master of the unflattering nickname.) And a guy who claims political assassins Lee Atwater and Karl Rove as professional inspirations.

So, how does he fit into a campaign that claimed, from the getgo, to be all about the issues?

“He knows how to win a campaign and there’s not a lot of people in the Republican world in Vermont that know how to win,” state Sen. Richard Westman told VTDigger.

OK, so it’s transactional. Fine. Them’s politics. But — and I know I’ve written this before — you can’t go negative and simultaneously claim to be Above It All. And you have absolutely no grounds to complain if your opponent follows you into the gutter.

In that vein, I hereby offer a script for a campaign ad that’s not negative, as Barnett and his colleagues put it, but is based on carefully selected facts designed to make Scott Milne look like a bum, and Molly Gray look like a saint.

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