Technically it's not a Republican Party press release, it's a Heritage Foundation press release that appears in form of a Journal Op-ed today, but you get the idea. And I'm not exaggerating when I say the Journal published a press release. The 'column' in question is penned by a pair of Heritage honchos who announce the formation of Heritage's new advocacy organization. i.e. It's a press release.

And yes, it's just embarrassing. I mean, even for the Journals' opinion pages, which, at best, enjoy a casual relationship with traditional journalism standards such as fairness and accuracy, to be reduced to printing a think tank press releases marks a new low for Rupert Murdoch's RNC clearing house.

UPDATED: From the Journal's own posted guidelines for those interested in submitting a piece to the daily's opinion section [emphasis added]:

If you would like to submit an article for consideration, it must be exclusive to the Journal. Your article should be a strong argument about an issue in the news.

But apparently, if you run the right-wing Heritage Foundation your article can resemble a press release.