After Alan Grayson released an ad calling his opponent “Taliban Dan,” there was a lot of silly hand-wringing on the left about how misleading and unfair it was.

Same thing’s happening again with a Jack Conway attack ad on Rand Paul.

A fellow Democrat warned Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway that his latest ad targeting Republican Rand Paul’s reported behavior in college is “very dangerous.”

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, said the Conway ad that repeats an unsubstantiated GQ story about Paul when he was a student at Baylor University comes “close to the line” in what should be deemed inappropriate in political campaigns.

“Candidates who are behind at the end reach, and sometimes they overreach,” McCaskill said on MSNBC. “This ad is very dangerous because it reaches back to college. The ad came close to the line.”

Spare me, Claire.

Anyone remember Republicans complaining when George H.W. Bush slammed Clinton for his pot smoking and Vietnam protest “on foreign soil?” Can you recall Republicans going on national tevee and condemning Bush/Cheney’s “Daisy II” ad against Gore? What about Willie Horton? What about Rove’s hit job on Max Cleland?

Yeah, I can’t either.