The American Spectator

And this from another superior officer, Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Price: “[Captain] Griffin’s legal analysis and advocacy skills are superb….He maintains the highest ethical standards….”

Another superior called Griffin “a born litigator.” And because of his background and evaluation ratings, Griffin was chosen to deploy to Iraq shortly after he began work as a special assistant to the president at the start of Bush’s second term. Surely a Rove Flunkie could have gotten out of that, no?

But none of these facts matter when it comes to partisan politics. Legal expertise, military experience, glowing evaluation reports, promotions, duty to country… all that is meaningless to the usual partisan suspects. Why? Because J. Timothy Griffin not only has the audacity to be a loyal Republican but had the unmitigated gall to help George W. Bush get re-elected.

Scandalous!

AND GET THIS, KIDS: He wasn’t ashamed of it. Google up Tim Griffin and you’ll find stories like “Oppo Man On the Attack” in the Washington Post circa 2003 — complete with photos and quotes and everything. Griffin may have thought he was just being up-front and honest, but what he ended up doing was handing some cheap ammo to the demagogues, which, uncharacteristically, seem to include Arkansas’ Senator Pryor.

Pryor usually isn’t one for personal attacks or vendettas. His father, former U.S. Senator David Pryor, is legendary in Arkansas for his gentlemanly manner. And it’s clear Pryor the Younger got the good-guy gene.

But the current Senator Pryor seems personally offended by the political appointment of Tim Griffin to this political post. Could it be because Griffin was dispatched to Arkansas by the RNC in the waning weeks of Pryor’s ‘02 campaign for U.S. Senate against Republican incumbent Tim Hutchinson? And that Griffin’s job was, yes, Oppo Research in an effort to turn out the GOP vote — such as it is in true-blue Arkansas? (Pryor won easily.)

Do we hear a “Duh” from the cheap seats?

p>Although Camp Pryor has complained about the interim appointment of Griffin circumventing the precious Process of nomination and subsequent senatorial circus, listen to what Pryor’s spokesman Michael Teague, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette : br> /p>

“The one thing that stands out is that [Griffin] worked for Karl Rove in the West Wing of the White House. Is he getting special treatment?…Is he going to make good legal decisions or is he going to make political decisions?”

br> Because, you see, not only is Tim Griffin a Republican, which is bad enough, but he has a connection to…Karl Rove! Which clearly trumps everything else on his impressive resume, including that year he spent dodging IED’s just outside Baghdad.

A few days ago, Mark Pryor’s office sent out a press release expounding upon the senator’s strong support for military men and women, how he’s spent “much of his time in office fighting for military personnel and their families.” Just not, apparently, Major Tim Griffin.

The senator’s press release would be kind of funny if it didn’t look a lot like politics.