The Zombie Jamboree: Davis campaign to haunt GOP tour

Last week, one of those cute boys at MnPublius reported that Brian Davis had been "left for dead," according to a Republican source.

We took his word for it; however, today it looks as if the corpse of Davis's campaign has joined the ranks of the walking dead and will infect Senator Coleman's swing through southern Minnesota.

The Rochester Post Bulletin's Matt Stolle reported that Giuliani to campaign in Rochester for Coleman:

With the race for U.S. Senate largely deadlocked, GOP Sen. Norm Coleman is returning to Rochester, this time with former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani in tow.

Coleman, who has promised to spend the rest of the election season on the campaign trial, will be at the Kahler Grand Hotel at 11:15 a.m. Friday. Both he and Giuliani will also hold campaign events in Mankato and Owatonna before arriving in Rochester.

But it was not to be. In Midwest Campaign Swing, KAAL-TV reports that Brian Davis is inserting himself into the tour as aggressively as a GOP tracker invading Ashwin Madia's conversations with union painters.  Davis told the station:

"It’s great that Mayor Giuliani will be here,” says GOP U.S. Congressional Candidate Brian Davis. “He's an American hero and a patriot. I'll be campaigning through the first district and I’m honored to be campaigning with him and Senator Coleman.”

The GOP trio will make stops in Mankato, Owatonna and Rochester later this week.

With luck, Davis might even be able to get some new clothes from the deal. That is, if he controls himself from chanting about drilling in ANWR (which Coleman more or less opposes and has repeatedly voted against) or cackling that the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Association is a partisan group, as he told KEYC-TV yesterday.

In Walz Gets 'A' Rating from Iraq and Afghanistan Vets Group, KEYC-TV paraphrased as Davis saying:

Walz received the A plus rating from a partisan organization.

That's news to several Iraq War vets we talked to last night, who thought the group was like the VFW, "except focused on 21st century wars," as one former soldier put it. (The VFW PAC, btw, endorsed Walz a while back). 

Even more, Davis's opinion will probably be news to Norm Coleman.  Like Harry Reid, whom Davis denounced to KEYC-TV, Coleman received an "A" from the group. On his official senate site, Coleman said of the group:

". . .I appreciate IAVA’s recognition and I look forward to working with them in the future as I continue to fight for our nation’s veterans.”

The KEYC-TV report said that Davis will be issuing a statement responding to a letter Veterans for Walz sent to him asking about vets issues. The vets letter was written after Davis repeatedly  said he couldn't think of any way that medical or educational benefits could be improved for our nation's vets.

Perhaps the out-of-touch doc can also explain why Coleman was ranked high by a "partisan" vets group. Somehow, we doubt Coleman will beginning scorning the high grade and encouraging Davis to carry on this way in joint public appearances.

Readers should visit the IAVA's web site to decide for themselves how "partisan" the IAVA's agenda is.  We've emailed the group to ask for a response to Davis's statements.

Update: We've just gotten word from the Franken campaign that Rudy supplied the voice for an anti-Obama robocall. Will Mr. "No Negative Campaigning" Coleman wink at this instance of nasty politicking as well? [end update]

To celebrate the campaign swing, we present the Notre Dame Glee Club in concert covering a Rockapella and Kingston Trio classic. No word if the tuxes came from Neiman Marcus: