Jenkins "Caught in a Net Republicans Wove"

The expression is something about not hurling stones if you live in glass houses. It means if you happen to be screaming at someone about failing to do something at the top of your lungs, you need to make sure first that all of your ducks are in a row, otherwise you're just looking to have your rhetoric fly right back in your toothy little face.

Thus is the problem with which Lynn Jenkins and the entire Kansas Republican Party now find themselves dealing.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) -- Some Republicans watched with frustration last week as Lynn Jenkins, their nominee in the 2nd Congressional District, faced questions about recent meetings she missed as a state pension system trustee.

Democratic Rep. Nancy Boyda raised the issue during their last debate. Fellow Democrats noted that as Jenkins was missing meetings, turmoil on Wall Street was causing the pension fund's assets to decline more than $1 billion in value.

[...]

Republicans have another reason to be frustrated. If the issue sticks with voters, it will because the GOP has made diligence an issue against several Democrats, including Boyda. Something the GOP has raised will have unintentionally boomeranged.

"An attack only really works when it taps into an issue people are already thinking about," said Washburn University political scientist Bob Beatty.

It's always a little sad when spiders get caught in their own webs, particularly webs they've been spinning so furiously for so long- Lynn Jenkins has railed about "the saddest day in her life" when Congresswoman Nancy Boyda left a hearing room for 10 minutes in July 2007 for months now.

Spending gallons of ink attacking on this particularly issue, however, gave Boyda the in she needed to attack Jenkins back in the very same vein- only, unfortunately for Jenkins, for a substantially more significant indescresion.

"Boyda comes in, and it makes her comment on KPERS sound actually sort of non-partisan," Beatty said. "It has more power because of the Roberts ads that have put this idea in people's heads, that you should hold people accountable for attendance."

And now Jenkins and the Republicans are in a pickle. Anyone with a brain, when comparing 10 minutes out of a hearing to not attending any meetings for a full fiscal quarter, will come down that the Jenkins failure is much more substaintial, and now the GOP will have to pay the price for letting small, petty attacks open this door.

And, as Mr. Hanna with the AP says:

But one thing is clear: Jenkins has been caught, albeit unintentionally, in a net that fellow Republicans wove.