Now this is something. Gordon Smith has been doing his damnedest for the past two years--knowing how much of a target his Senate seat was going to be--to pretend like he's the Democrat in the race.

And now, here's this ad, with Smith claiming to have been "one of the first to stand up to George Bush and other Republicans to end this war."

(Hint to Democrats--think the Iraq war still doesn't strongly resonate with voters? Obviously, Gordon Smith and the Republicans do.)

Let's just set the record straight. Smith might have been the first Republicans in the Senate to oppose the war, but that was an obvious political calculation, as pointed out in this story by Oregon political report Jeff Mapes:

[Former Oregon representative] Furse might have been accurate if she called Smith one of the first Republicans to oppose the war. But Smith backed the war for more than three years before first speaking out against it days after the 2006 election.

In contrast, all four Democrats in the House delegation voted in 2002 against giving Bush the authorization to go to war. [emphasis mine]

In fact, we saw this coming. Markos, in December, 2006.

Iraq seemed like a great idea to Gordon Smith, until he realized he had to run for reelection.

In an emotional speech on the Senate floor Thursday night, Sen Gordon Smith, a moderate Republican from Oregon who has been a supporter of the war in Iraq, said the U.S. military's "tactics have failed" and he "cannot support that anymore."

Smith said he is at, "the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up the same bombs, day after day....

"I, for one, am tired of paying the price of 10 or more of our troops dying a day. So let's cut and run or cut and walk, but let us fight the way on terror more intelligently that we have because we have fought this war in a very lamentable way," he said.

Whoever runs against Smith in 2008, and we have good options who will make this a top-tier race, needs to remind voters that Smith enabled the Bush/Lieberman/McCain war until it was time for his job evaluation.

Jeff Merkley is the candidate making this race top-tier, and he is also on top of Smith's false claims. He's joined by a number of Oregon's high profile Dems, and, happily, local news.