Poetic justice.

FiredUpInCa has a Diary up confirming that the person responsible for facilitating the release of the now-infamous Romney video is none other than James Carter IV, the grandson of former President Jimmy Carter. In his Diary, FiredUpInCa asks



Wouldn't it be ironic if the guy who takes such glee in denigrating the legacy of former President Jimmy Carter, has his political career ended by the literal legacy of Jimmy Carter?

After emailing his grandfather the magazine's story about the tape -- under the subject, "Huge campaign news," and calling it "my biggest story yet" -- the former president wrote back at 7:16 am Tuesday: "James: This is extraordinary. Congratulations! Papa."

At 7:16 am this morning, we heard from former President Carter:Jimmy Carter, probably the best ex-President who has ever graced our country, has served as a punching bag and punch line for Republicans for the last twenty years. Because he dared to tell the truth to Americans about the economic malaise that we were living through in the late 70's, none of which was particularly his doing, and because he lost the 1980 election to a Republican icon, a man so bereft of personal character as to inform on his colleagues in the film industry and even enlist J. Edgar Hoover to spy on his own family , he has had to endure a constant stream of vituperation and smearing during the latter part of his extraordinary life.

The young Mr Carter is well aware of the opprobrium foisted on his grandfather's shoulders by the same people who nearly destroyed the US Economy and deliberately sabotaged our current President's attempts to resuscitate it.



"I'm proud of my role in being able to track him down," James Carter, 35, said about the source who took the video. "I'm a partisan Democrat. My motivation is to help Democrats get elected. If there is anything I can find in any race, I try to do that."

But Carter also confirmed there is a personal side to the backstory of the campaign video: he was especially motivated, he said, because of Romney's frequent attacks on the presidency of his grandfather, including the GOP candidate's comparisons to the "weak" foreign policy of Carter and Barack Obama. "It gets under my skin -- mostly the weakness on the foreign policy stuff," Carter said. "I just think it's ridiculous. I don’t like criticism of my family."

But his motivation went well beyond partisan politics:Let's explore that a little.

Here is what the Romney campaign said when they disastrously jumped the gun to make political hay out of our Ambassador's death at the hands of a violent attack on our consulate last week:



“For the first time since Jimmy Carter, we’ve had an American ambassador assassinated,” Romney foreign policy adviser Richard Williamson told the Washington Post.

“When it comes to jobs, President Obama makes the Jimmy Carter years look like good old days,” Ryan told about 1,000 supporters. “If we fired Jimmy Carter then, why would we rehire Barack Obama now?”

Up to this week, GOP leaders have used Carter comparisons mostly to undermine Obama on economic issues. Now foreign policy and national security have been added to the mix, propelled by the murders of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other U.S. officials, along with mobs rioting in the streets of several Middle Eastern countries.

Here's the zombie-eyed granny starver weighing in with his wonky wisdom:And on and on they went:Here's something to consider. Because of Jimmy Carter, every hostage made it out of Tehran alive. He didn't try to trade weapons to the regime holding them. He didn't start a pointless and unnecessary war killing hundreds of thousands or bluster on about American hegemony. He didn't destroy our international reputation.

No, the Republicans did all these things.

So yes, FiredUpInCa, it is a delicious irony that we see the grandson of former President James Earl Carter effectively pulling the the switch on the trapdoor that Mitt Romney and the Republican Party have found themselves falling through right now.

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