January 13, 2010 10:21 PM UTC

Norton Gives Dem "Tracker" Bum's Rush

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

Looks like all this not-so-flattering video of Senate candidate Jane Norton courting the “Tea Party” movement, from her “Obama cares more about terrorists rights than you” zinger to “loving the passion” of attendees who say President Obama is a Muslim who wants to ‘throw babies out with the garbage’–and a new gold nugget from Norton we’ll turn to in a moment–anyway, somebody in the campaign finally realized that this footage making its way on to national TV, and accumulating for future attack ads was, you know, a bad thing. The Plum Line’s Greg Sargent reports:

Norton has barred the Dem tracker who’s been trailing her with a video recorder from taping any more of her events, Dem sources familiar with the situation tell me.

Norton, one of a handful of candidates competing for the GOP nomination, seems to be fully embracing the Tea Party brigage. She most recently earned national renown for sitting silently by while one voter called Obama a “Muslim” and another said “idiot” Obama wanted to let babies die by the side of the road.

Norton also has said that Obama cares more about protecting terrorists’ rights than protecting the lives of Americans. She’s praised the “Tea Party movement” and the “9/12 groups.”

All these Norton statements were videotaped by the Dem tracker who feeds material to the DSCC, and all went national. As a result, Dem sources say, Norton’s campaign is now forbidding him from videotaping any of her events, and has even kicked him out on at least one occasion.

It gets better. After the tracker was forbidden from videotaping Norton at an event earlier this month, the tracker secretly recorded it with a small audio recorder. And it paid off: There’s now audio of Norton suggesting she doesn’t think the Federal government should be involved in health care at all…

And yes, Medicare and Medicaid recipients, you can listen to Jane Norton agree that “the federal government has no place in health care” right here. For those of you keeping score, that’s Medicare, Medicaid, and the Department of Education Norton says should be ‘abolished.’

There are two ways to look at this story about the “tracker,” as always: you can (sort of) commend Norton’s campaign for having the presence of mind, however belatedly, to stanch the steady bleed-out of her credibility as she willingly both asserts and assents to fringe “Tea Party” lunacy that no responsible public official should publicly endorse. Or, perhaps she just doesn’t want what she has to do to placate the extremists, who maybe she doesn’t agree with but believes she must win over to prevail this November, used against her with the not-crazy majority of voters.

Neither of those possibilities makes Norton look very good, but you can certainly understand why, either way, they don’t want it on camera anymore.