Remember last month when the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington sent out a mass-email blasting 6th Congressional District Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman over the U.S. House’s version of the GOP health care plan? Standard fare for groups like the DCCC, we figured at the time – except, the missive implied Coffman had voted for the legislation when he was one of 20 Republicans in the House to break ranks with his party and vote against it.

We’d wondered if some DCCC staffer simply erred in compiling the list – the group no doubt had sent out similar screeds to the districts of numerous other House Republicans – but a spokeswoman chimed in after reading our first take and assured us, “This was no mistake.” Her words.

As it turned out, it actually was just a cynical and deceptive tactic. Our words.

Looks like the DCCC is at it again. This time, they’re going after Coffman as well as Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton. Via Denver 9News’s resident political junkie (and crackerjack journalist) Brandon Rittiman:

Having been down this road before, we won’t be so naive as to suppose they were just cutting corners to save time by using substantially the same wording in the two diatribes – one regarding a Republican congressman who had voted for the much-debated GOP health plan, and the other regarding his colleague and Colorado compatriot who had voted against it. Both saddle their respective targets with responsibility for the GOP legislation; only a lawyerly reading would deduce one of the two had voted “no.”

Whether Coffman’s vote was a calculated sidestep – y’know, winked at with a kitchen pass from the House leadership so that the five-term survivor could tell his swing-voting district he had stood up to his own party – is a worthy issue. It’s also pretty much standard procedure in both parties for members in hotly contested districts.

Whether, at this point, the DCCC’s slash-and-burn e-blasts are even worth the digital bytes they’re written on – given their fast and loose wordplay – is also a worthy issue. Of course, that is pretty much standard fare for both parties, as well.