Campaign Watch: Robocall blowback & ACORN paranoia

October 20, 2008

Robocall blowback & ACORN paranoia

As he observed while making his endorsement of Barack Obama on Sunday, former Secretary of State Colin Powell isn't the only Republican turned off by the ugly turn of the campaign, including the nationwide blitz of nasty automatic McCain campaign robocalls that have also hit New Hampshire and Maine -- The NH Obama campaign has put forth some former NH Republicans and McCain supporters who are saying "thanks but no thanks" to the tactics and McCain's candidacy. One of those is Maxine Morse of Rye who said in a press release Friday, "As a former supporter and active volunteer of John McCain's in 2000, I have to say I'm disappointed to get these calls from his campaign. The man I supported would have never conducted his campaign this way as he always took the high road. This is such a switch from the McCain I knew and is one of the many reasons I’m supporting Barack Obama for president.”

While stumping for Obama in the state on Saturday, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts then hit Sen John Sununu for not renouncing them as Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine did in very quick fashion (she's in a tough reelection bid -- as is Sununu.) “Susan Collins, the Republican in Maine, has seen fit to publicly say she thinks they’re wrong and I call on John Sununu to break his silence and come out and tell the people of New Hampshire those calls have no place in the Granite State, they have no place in the live free or die state- none whatsoever,” Kerry said.

Who knows if these calls will scare enough people to either vote or stay away from the polls out of disgust. McCain looked somewhat anemic defending them -- in part because he must know with a little over two weeks to go he shouldn't be spending a minute defending questionable campaign tactics.

Enough about ACORN
In the past week, I've been amazed that McCain and Sarah Palin have wasted their time on the ACORN voter registration fraud fairy tale -- Palin mentioned it in passing in Dover last Wednesday and at the final debate McCain sounded like an idiot, saying the poor folks community organization "is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy." Of all the goofy things McCain has said on this year, this was one based on pure fantasy -- and designed to do little but scare people. I've heard from voters the choruses from the right-wing echo chamber but really folks, get some knowledge and some perspective -- especially take a look at the solar system difference between registration fraud (in which ACORN is more victim than criminal) and actual incidences of voter fraud at the ballot booth while conveniently ignoring the systematic GOP voter suppression program. Dahlia Lithwick of Slate has offered this fine primer separating fact from fiction. In other words, some minimum wage voter registration worker may sign up Mickey Mouse but Mickey Mouse ain't voting.

Posted by Michael McCord at October 20, 2008 09:04 AM

Comments

Another day, another Herald-sanctioned McCord hit-piece against Republicans. And yet another ACORN apologist who thinks it is just a harmless prank to register fraudulent voters. As if all the names registered are as easily recognizable as a fraud as Mickey Mouse.

Pathetic Fifth columnist.

Posted by: WhyIsHeraldSoBiased at October 20, 2008 09:09 PM

Do you remember how conservatives booed McCain when he won the Republican nomination? And now he's losing because the Herald is sooo biased. Riiiiight....

***********************

If WhyIsHeraldSoBiased did any research, he'd learn that the false registrations he holds against ACORN as proof of corruption are ones they themselves identified to election officials.

He should also ask himself: "If all these charges about ACORN are true, then ACORN is a corrupt organization. Why hasn't there ever been a RICO ("Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations") prosecution against ACORN?" What the anti-ACORN charges amount to is RICO qualified. ACORN has never been charged with any crime. A few of ACORN's employees have, but then a few of any supermarket's employees shoplift. That doesn't mean the supermarket is guilty of theft.

ACORN'S employees try to cheat the system to shirk their duties and get paid for doing less or nothing. ACORN catches them and notifies authorities.

(It's either that or the possibility that Republican skullduggery plants people to work at ACORN and do things to discredit them. If that sounds paranoid, read Karl Rove's bio.)

Every registration form given to ACORN must be turned-in by law. It's a felony not to, even if the forms are suspicious.

ACORN has internal quality-control proceedures to identify such malfeasances and flags them. Most if not all cases of fake registrations are ones ACORN flagged.

Then, to justify voter-harassing techniques, state-level Republican operatives cynically take these same ACORN-identified false registrations and call them proof of ACORN's corruption.

This way they can create an atmosphere of suspicion in minority precincts and call for extra measures that make it more difficult to vote, thereby suppressing votes in places they think Democratic opportunities will benefit from high turn-out.

From ACORN:

"U.S. Attorney, Bradley Schlozman, who [politicized] prosecutions against former ACORN canvassers, was forced to acknowledge under cross examination by the Senate Judiciary Committee that ACORN was the victim of fraud by its employees and ACORN had caught the employees and had identified them to law enforcement."

From the Boston Globe:

"That summer [2006], the liberal activist group ACORN paid workers $8 an hour to sign up new voters in poor neighborhoods around the country. Later, ACORN's Kansas City chapter discovered that several workers filled out registration forms fraudulently instead of finding real people to sign up. ACORN fired the workers and alerted law enforcement.

Schlozman moved fast, so fast that his office got one of the names on the indictments wrong. He announced the indictments of four former ACORN workers on Nov. 1, 2006, warning that 'this national investigation is very much ongoing.' Missouri Republicans seized on the indictments to blast Democrats in the campaign endgame."

Here's a pertinent and related question for our indignant GOP friend:

Why are so many conservatives jumping the Republican ship to endorse Obama? Could it be that they're disheartened by a governing style that relies solely on lies, smears, slanders, prejudice, hysteria and shenanigans?

Posted by: Gimp Face at October 20, 2008 10:07 PM

The reason most often stated for the defections is the selection of Sarah Palin as VP. To me that is not reason enough to jump on the Socialist bandwagon. When the going gets tough people look to government to help them out. The problem is, once you are allowed to suck on the teat of government, too many people find it is impossible to wean themselves off. Socialism is a slippery slope.

Posted by: WhyIsHeraldSoBiased at October 21, 2008 06:51 AM

The reason so many conservatives are endorsing Obama is that they never much liked McCain to begin with, and that McCain relies too much on fear, loathing and hysteria as motivation for support.

The selection of Palin as VP had the effect of reigniting the culture war mentality, which feeds back into the aforementioned observation. Plus, she's something of a foreign-policy, American history ignoramus, therefore an embarrassment.

Your "socialism" charge is an example of the hysteria I cite because it's exaggerated: If you really believe that Obama's socialist, then you don't know what socialism is because, by your apparent definition, we're already a socialist nation. Wealth is redistributed through public education by taxing childless people to pay for the education of other people's kids.

So you were born in "Marxist" American but never even knew it.

When will you reveal to your fellow citizens the Marxist evil that is public education?

Posted by: Gimp Face at October 21, 2008 07:21 AM

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31