First ratf*ck against Dean?

I think we may have our first serious contender for a GOP dirty trick against the Dean campaign (with an added kick to the Kerry campaign as well). The American Spectator, a right-wing hit rag that financed "The Arkansas Project" (a multi-million dollar effort to dig up dirt on Bill Clinton) has published an article about an alleged opposition research effort being run out of the Kerry campaign that allegedly is trying to dig up dirt on Dean. (I won't quote the article here because I don't want to propagate the smears anymore than is necessary to get this story out). I've seen a couple of other bloggers post on this, including the Dean Defense Force, with the apparent belief that this story is legitimate. The story only quotes unnamed Kerry staffers and conveniently uses the vehicle of this story to plant a lot of stink bombs against Dean (raising questions about whether Dean ever performed an abortion and whether he got a draft deferment improperly) while placing the blame for these stories on the Kerry campaign. In other words, this story looks to me to be a plant designed to (1) smear Dean and (2) get the Dean and Kerry forces fighting with each other. I'm not buying it. You shouldn't buy it either. Be warned folks. We are going to see a lot of this kind of crap in the coming months. Let this be an object lesson.