Well not really. The argument is that if this is a non partisan effort then this would have caused the same outcome if the political motivations were reversed. The parent comment is suggesting that is not true. I don't know if that has been well argued by the parent but I don't think this is an attempt at mud slinging.

A better argument would be to point out that a non partisan motion should gain some Republican support and it has not.

Additionally you could point out that it would be unlikely to gain support from the right due to the current incarnation of right wing politicians tending to support freedom of speech and would be opposed to this action on a partisan basis.

Helpful info: https://theoutline.com/post/8610/united-states-russia-whatab...

I loved this part:

What if a man comes home, and says to his wife:

“Susan, you didn’t take out the trash!” he says.

“Brad, you have never taken out the trash once in your life,” she replies.

Would it be fair for him to turn, smugly clutching a copy of The Economist, and say, “Susan, this is not about me. I can’t believe you are doing whataboutism”?

Without reading the context and just looking at that quote... yeah, probably! If he's really never taken the trash out once in his life and they're married, then either they have an arrangement where she's the one taking out the trash, or they'd be totally covered in trash.

... getting in before the "maybe they've only been married a couple of days and this is the first load of trash" - then how does she know he's never taken the trash out in his life?

I call shenanigans.