Senator Mitch McConnell is behind the swift-boating of the 12-year-old brain-damaged child

Way to go, Mitch -- is this "compassionate conservatism?"

Yesterday, ThinkProgress reported that there was mounting evidence

that a staffer for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) may

have been involved in the right-wing campaign to smear Graeme Frost

and his family.

ABC News reported earlier in the week that an e-mail sent to reporters

by “a Senate Republican leadership aide” in McConnell’s office

suggested that “GOP aides were complicit in spreading disparaging

information about the Frosts.” A McConnell spokesman refused to deny

the office’s involvement in the affair.

ThinkProgress has obtained an email that congressional sources tell us

was sent to reporters by Sen. McConnell’s communications director Don

Stewart.

On Monday morning, Don Stewart sent an email with the following text

to reporters:

Seen the latest blogswarm? Apparently, there’s more to the story on

the kid (Graeme Frost) that did the Dems’ radio response on SCHIP.

Bloggers have done a little digging and turned up that the Dad owns

his own business (and the building it’s in), seems to have some

commercial rental income and Graeme and a sister go to a private

school that, according to its website, costs about $20k a year ‹for

each kid‹ despite the news profiles reporting a family income of only

$45k for the Frosts. Could the Dems really have done that bad of a job

vetting this family?

In the email, Stewart attacks Democrats for allegedly doing a bad job

“vetting this family.” That effort to blame Democrats for the smear

campaign seems to have swayed some reporters, as CNN this morning

claimed that the real story is that “the Democrats didn’t do as much

of a vetting as they could have done.”

The New York Times reported yesterday that “an aide” to Sen.. McConnell

“expressed relief that his office had not issued a press release

criticizing the Frosts.” No, what the McConnell staffer did was worse

— he used the power and privilege of the Senate office to secretly

propagate a baseless smear campaign against a 12-year old boy and his

family simply because they disagreed on policy.