No Room For Wife-Beater?

The AP story (quoted by Jonah Goldberg in the Corner) about the firing of the Cardin staffer/Oreo blogger includes the following quote from the Steele campaign:

Melissa Sellers, a Steele spokeswoman, criticized the blog.

"It is deeply disturbing to learn that a staff member of 10-term Congressman Ben Cardin would keep a blog chronicling racial prejudices toward Lt. Gov. Steele and others," Sellers said. "This is the kind of attitude and gutter politics that Marylanders are sick of and why they are ready for change."

Notice that the description of Cardin used when pith is all-important is "10-term Congressman Ben Cardin." The number one thing the Steele campaign wants voters to know about Cardin is that he has served in Congress for 20 years.

[NB: Without more, I don't consider the following statement, from the blog, antisemitic: The blog also contains an entry describing Cardin's friends as "large men with strong, loud voices and Jewish noses." "Jewish" describes a type of nose, as well as a type of rye bread, and simply noting the someone has that type of nose is not antisemitic. "Jewish" is, in fact, a strongly descriptive word when applied to noses that immediately gives us all a mental picture of the type of nose described. Objecting to the description as antisemitic, on the other hand, may well be antisemitic as it implicitly treats the adjective "Jewish" as pejorative.]