So now we get to see what John Edwards is made of

...and I have a feeling we're not going to like the answer.

In case anyone thought that the "Obama went to a madrassa" smear was the end of the swiftboating for a while, guess again.

In hiring two outspoken, sometimes outrageous women from the blogosphere, Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon and Melissa McEwan, a.k.a. ShakesSis, John Edwards now has to see if he can find his balls.

As someone who has been known to use salty language AND impugn the self-righteous wankers of so-called Christianity (See? I just did it again), I find the outcry from the wingnuts, led by Catholic League head William Donohue, to be somewhat disingenuous, given that the right has embraced and given a megaphone to the likes of Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin for the last six years.

According to the New York Times, the Edwards campaign is "weighing the fate of the two bloggers."

"Weighing the fate"? What are they doing, planning an execution?

What the Edwards campaign needs to remember is that William Donohue and his followers are never, ever in a million years going to vote for John Edwards. Nor are they going to vote for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or any other Democrat. By even admitting that the campaign is reconsidering its hiring of these two women FOR THINGS THEY WROTE BEFORE THEY WERE EVEN HIRED, the campaign has already let the bullies of the right know that they can be cowed.

This is unacceptable. The campaign of 2008 has already started, and the right has made its shot across the bow that 2008 for them is not going to be about Iraq, it's not going to be about the diminishing middle class, nor is it going to be about health care. It's going to be about, as Howard Dean said in 2004, "God, guns, and gays." At least so far, Edwards is playing right into the right's hands.

Here's what I'd like to see. I know this race is going to get dirty. I know that all the candidates are going to be subject to lies and smears and irrelevancies. I would like to see all of the Democratic candidates stand in solidarity against these tactics. When John Gibson lies about Barack Obama being a stealth Muslim terrorist, let John Edwards speak up for him. When the right demands that John Edwards fire his staffers, let Hillary Clinton speak up for him.

There's plenty of room for disagreement about the issues. But when it comes to this kind of swiftboating tactics, let's nip this thing in the bud right now. Because it isn't going to get any better.

Republicans have nothing on which to run. Their president, to whom they still mindlessly cleave, has singlehandedly wrecked the Middle East, the Middle Class, just about everything else. They have nothing to sell but fear itself -- fear and loathing and faux self-righteousness, while they sit and wait eagerly for the Rapture. So instead they decide to get their panties in a twist over a couple of twentysomething women who are guilty of nothing more than venturing an opinion. Certainly the spew that has been uttered over the public airwaves for the last six years by the likes of Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Michael the Savage Weiner, and their ilk, give the right no room to talk about offensive language.