After reading Pogie’s post over at Intelligent Discontent on what may be the worst editorial opinion ever, seriously, I ask for your views on whether this might also be a contender.  It is, at any rate, very very weak.

The Helena IR’s managing editor John Doran, making the unusual move of signing the editorial himself, writes:

Mid-term elections are in full swing, with each party united, and the caustic rhetoric isn’t exactly music to voters’ ears as they blast away from both sides of the aisle [emphasis added].

He sites as examples (1) the TEA Party’s hateful rhetoric and (2) the Montana GOP ‘s platform position in favor of imprisoning gay citizens of Montana.

The opinion piece offers no evidence of this kind of rhetoric from the Democratic Party, but that doesn’t stop Mr. Doran.  No, he doesn’t appear to notice the inherent flaw in his arguments when he makes the conclusion that:

the notion of “disagreeing without being disagreeable” is noticeably absent from all things political these days.

His argument suffers from his failure to provide evidence that Democrats are calling for anyone to be imprisoned or joking about others being beaten and left to die on the side of a fence.  We won’t even get into the fact that every other paper in America has already discovered that “united” is the last word one uses to describe the GOP this year.    It also suffers from another omission.

Mr. Doran writes that:

The Helena School District health curriculum debate has been fierce, with accusations of lying, manipulating facts and driving an agenda flying from both opponents and proponents.

But he need only ask any member of the School Board or School District staff from whom are they receiving the death threats  to determine that the threatening violent rhetoric comes squarely from those on one side of the issue, the opponents.

UPDATE: Pogie has a really interesting theory about this editorial.  Go read it.