PrintOctober 18, 2010
Democrat Dirty Tricks: The Next Round
As we gallop toward the date of the Democratic apocalypse, Democrats are pulling more tricks out of their bag to bamboozle (as Barack Obama would say) voters into pulling the lever for them come November 2. "How low will they go?" is the question.
Let's take another tour of the political landscape to see what these geniuses have cooked up to deliver to us through their friends in the media world.
Well, we've got your puppy-killing Republican running for Governor in Illinois. Here is the ad the hapless Democratic incumbent Pat Quinn (successor to the recently convicted Rod Blagojevich) has been running:
"Bill Brady's first priority was to sponsor a bill that would mass-euthanize sheltered dogs and cats in gas chambers," the narrator of a web video for incumbent Pat Quinn says, indignantly, in reference to the Democratic governor's Republican opponent.
Cut to a woman holding a little fluffy dog.
"Shame on Bill Brady," she says. "I am a Republican, but I don't support him for the mass euthanization of animals." Then she turns to kiss the dog. Another woman, holding a dog on a leash, also says she's a Republican, but "that's sick and wrong."
As the ad fades to black, the dog barks.
Boy, you know it is pretty bad when Fido is brought into the battle. In reality, Brady was just proposing as a state senator that Illinois -- one of the worst fiscal basket cases in the nation -- to try to save some taxpayer dollars by having cash-starved shelters euthanize animals in groups rather than one at a time. Human vets were to be consulted and consideration given to the "most humane practices." But those facts were left on the cutting room floor.
The Democrats have also been peddling xenophobia when spreading conspiracy tales regarding Chamber of Commerce ads -- enough ink has been spilled on this topic to spare you any more exposure except to make a couple of points. The Democrats have their own history of taking foreign money (Google "Gore, Clinton, donations"), and I do find it rather hypocritical for Obama to be slamming foreigners. Maybe he is just a bitter Democratic clinging to agitprop and resorting to xenophobia to salve his wounded pride. In any case, the Democrats have been touting this malarkey in local races around the country -- to little success other than breeding cynicism.
But the tactic had a broader purpose. The idea has been to use it as a wedge to pry into names of donors from the groups spending money on political ads against Democrats and their policies. Once these names are made public, the real "fun" begins as the Democratic "dogs of war" are unleashed. Target had a target on its back when it donated to a group that, in turn, donated a small amount of their total funds to a candidate who had views that offended gay groups. Then the mobocracy went into action, threatening boycotts, protesting, and the like against Target -- all with the help of plenty of newspaper reporting.
Result? Target has pulled its support with its tail between its legs. All corporations are now on notice to obey or get a newspaper whack.
Lest one think that faceless corporations are the only ones threatened, think again. El Coyote Café -- a legendary Los Angeles restaurant -- got slapped with a boycott by the gay and lesbian community because the daughter of the owner had the temerity to support Proposition 8, a ballot initiative to affirm marriage as an bond between a man and a woman in California.
But it gets worse; California was not an isolated case, but part of a pattern.
In August 2008, a former director of the George Soros-sponsored MoveOn.org proudly declared in the New York Times a witch hunt against anyone donating to Republicans -- the bigger the target, the better the aiming. Tom Mattzie declared he would send "warning" letters to the top 10,000 GOP givers "hoping to create a chilling effect that will dry up contributions" that are, of course, the lifeblood of the GOP since most of the media is in liberal hands. "Take no prisoners" seems to be the modus operandi at work.
Then we have five Democratic congressmen who claim in ads that they voted against the bank "bailout" when not a single one of them was even in Congress when the bill setting up the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was enacted. The nonpartisan FactCheck.org noted this gang of five:
At least five freshman Democratic House members are running ads claiming they voted against the bank "bailout," when in fact none was in Congress when the bill setting up the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, was enacted.
- Mary Jo Kilroy says she "voted against the bank bailout."
- Kathy Dahlkemper says she voted "against a bailout that helped Wall Street."
- Frank Kratovil claims to have cast his vote in opposition to "the big bank bailout."
- Dina Titus' ad maintains she "even voted against the bank bailout."
- Glenn Nye's ad tells viewers he went "against his own party" and "voted against the Wall Street bailout."
The final House vote on the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 took place on Oct. 3, 2008. The bill passed, 263-171. None of the five lawmakers who are running these ads is listed in the roll call vote. That's because none of them had taken office yet -- in fact, none of them would even be elected for another month.
What's a little fibbing when the ends eclipse the means -- when politics takes precedence over principles?
Fabricating history is no problem for none other than Democratic Senator Russ Feingold -- father, with John McCain, of the federal finance regime that was supposed to encourage honesty and transparency. Feingold is in the fight for his political life in Wisconsin against Republican businessman Ron Johnson. Feingold has been running radio ads claiming that Johnson is soft on gun rights; Feingold also said to reporters that he had been among the "true leaders in fighting for a greater right to bear arms." That would be a surprise to the National Rifle Association, which has given him a big fat "F" and "D" during the last two reelection efforts (this year, the NRA endorsed Johnson). The prospects must be very bad indeed for Feingold, one of the more liberal members of the Senate, to be trolling among gun-owners for votes.
The scorched earth practices of the Democrats are in full gear in the final stretch towards their being taken to the woodshed. The National Review took note of the sordid nature of the attacks in a column Five Foul Lies that began memorably:
Domestic violence. Promoting prostitution. Impoverishment of the elderly. Higher unemployment. Drug dealing. These are the values that inspire and drive Republican politicians -- at least according to the barrage of Democratic attack ads airing this election season.Faced with voters unenthusiastic about (or downright hostile to) legislation passed by the Democratic majority in the past two years -- notably, President Obama's health-care plan and the stimulus bill -- Democratic politicians are resorting to ads that paint Republican opponents as out-of-touch lunatics.
In one example cited, Washington Democratic Senator Patty Murray ran an ad regarding a tanker competition between foreign-owned Airbus and local employer Boeing, featuring the question "Should Boeing workers have a level playing field?" The ad cut to a clip of Republican challenger Dino Rossi, answering, "No. Not as far as I am concerned."
What was the problem? Rossi was answering a different question, and Murray's machinations led to some creative cutting and pasting that constituted blatant dishonesty.
Another example picked up by National Review concerned the wild western battle of wills between Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his feisty Republican challenger Sharron Angle. Reid's ad accused Angle of "siding with the abuser, not the abused." Angle, as a state legislator, voted against a 2001 bill that would have required Nevada to honor out-of-state restraining orders. But her opposition was based on concerns over a legal technicality in the bill and not over its purpose.
The Democrats know these are baseless lies. But where is the media? Apparently, the dollar-starved media will run any amount of tripe as long as it pays the bills. Has any ombudsman written a column regarding greedy media purveying propaganda? Has any dean of journalism or journalist who touts the sacred First Amendment ever covered the instances of Obama supporters threatening talk show hosts, including the legendary Milt Rosenberg, when they dared to host critics of Barack Obama on their shows? Or complained about a barrage of phone calls orchestrated by the Obama campaign that tied up phone lines so others could not call in with questions? The ACLU was AWOL.
The outrageous sound bites will be carpet-bombing us for the next two weeks. Democratic Governor Ed Rendell from the politically potent state of Pennsylvania warns us to vote like your life depends on it...because it just might (as one wag wrote, "Vote Democrat or Die" -- perfect for a bumper sticker). The claim that abortions will revitalize back alleys has again emerged as a theme, as has the canard that Social Security will be killed by Republicans.
The latest trick of the Democrats is to tap the internet to spread misinformation; these are the same folks who decried the internet when it was being used by critics of Barack Obama. Wikipedia depends on reader contributions sent in on internet streams to fill its pages, making it a fertile source for planting misinformation (though Wikipedia supposedly has filtering that cleanses the sites every once in a while).
The Democrats are picking up the game -- they were always leaders in tapping the net to power ahead of the GOP. The latest step is to send out Democratic drones to GoogleBomb. The goal is to try to influence undecided voters by skewing search-engine results with negative news articles regarding Republicans. The higher the number of people clicking on links to these articles, the higher they are ranked in Google searches and the more likely they will be read by voters. The left-wing Daily Kos has done this type of "campaigning" before for liberal candidates. This time around, Kos has given followers a guide to how finagle Google search results and has also given them a list of 98 candidates to target.
We can expect more of the same and worse to come in the next two weeks.
Americans want to hit the reset button, and Democrats will do anything to stop the button from being plunged.
Democrats will be pulling all the tricks they can from their Pandora's Box: slimy character attacks, the fabricating of history, Orwellian use of language, cut-and-paste hit jobs, extremist claims. The climate will change -- hot and heavy with a lot of mudslinging to come.
Ed Lasky is news editor of American Thinker.
