Peter Kinder Ridiculously Blames Governor Nixon for His Latest Scandal

Peter Kinder finally has a statement out about his embarrassing scandal that has many Republicans wondering if they might be better off with a different sacrificial lamb to run against Governor Jay Nixon. Like any good Republican, Kinder thinks his problems are entirely the fault of some Democrat rather than his own decisions, and he explicitly blames Jay Nixon for the story. The KC Star's Steve Kraske tweeted a portion of the statement:

Kinder putting blame on Nixon's shoulders for news coverage: "Jay Nixon may want to make up false stories about the past..."

However, the idea that Nixon's people planted this story is ridiculous, as can be seen from even a cursory glance at the Riverfront Times' description of how the story unfolded. The RFT first posted a photo of Kinder in a joking post. Then commenters who frequent local bars recognized the woman in the picture and the RFT tracked her down for an interview. Here's the RFT's description:

...the whole sordid tale began unfolding last Thursday, when we jokingly published a photo of Kinder "pressing the flesh" at a St. Louis bar. We (honestly!) had no idea that the bar, Verlin's, was known for its "pantsless parties," in which bartenders sling drinks in their panties. Or that he was posing with a former "Penthouse pet of the month" -- or that the "pet," now a 39-year-old, openly gay bartender, would be interested in sharing her story when we tracked her down. We just thought the picture was moderately amusing.

Really, the only reason any of this came to light is because RFT readers are such barflies, they almost immediately recognized the bar -- and the bartender. The GOP may want to claim this was an organized effort, but it looks a whole lot more like that new-fangled "crowd sourcing" thing to us.

If you were going to plant an attack piece on an opponent, there'd be better ways to go about it then sending a random photo, then hoping the outlet would track down a woman based on comments on the web site.

Furthermore, the sad fact for Kinder is that Nixon's campaign wouldn't want to plant a hit piece on Kinder because they want to run against him. At this point, it's pretty obvious that Kinder has little to no chance of winning, barring some dramatic turn of events. Why would Nixon's campaign want to force him out of the race in August of 2011 for a November 2012 race? It's just silly, and journalists like Jo Mannies and Jake Wagman should know better.