It would seem to me that the only acceptable response from the Edwards' campaign to the right's attempts to get Melissa (Shakespeare's Sister) and Amanda Marcotte fired from the is to point them to Glenn Greenwald's post on the subject and leave it at that.
Look: I thought the Edwards' campaign made a surprising choice when it picked up Amanda. She throws elbows, to say the least. And her focuses, and opinions, are not always popular in contemporary American political life. It seemed an act of bravery and conviction, though I wasn't sure what, exactly, the upside was. But the Edwards campaign chose her. They hired her. She left her blog for the position. And now they've got to defend their choice. To back down would either prove that their hiring process was incompetent and they didn't vet someone with an extensive public record, or that they'll collapse beneath even moderate pressure from rightwing professionals. Neither is a good look for the new campaign.
Again, I don't envy them the controversy. But they made their own hiring decisions. And it's an ugly precedent to let a little ripple of controversy divert them from an interesting course. If they need to respond, a counterattack digging up everything Patrick Ruffini has ever written, or Bill Donahue has ever said, or Rush Limbaugh has ever snorted, would be fine. But in the end, this will be a choice for the campaign. Who's respect do they care more about retaining? The netroots'? Or Bill Donahue's?
