Seems that Congresswoman Melissa Hart's been busy. She sent out a press release on Wednesday that shows that, while she isn't in Rick Santorum's league in terms of deception and manipulation (but then again, who is?), she's certainly capable of a fair amount of obfuscating - no question.
As an aside, what happened to that Health-Care debate? Shouldn't Missy be preparing for that instead of wasting our time with misleading press releases?
Here's what she said in the release:
(Cranberry Township, PA) -- Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show that former lobbyist Jason Altmire has accepted the support of a rabidly pro-choice group – donations that now thrown into question his claim that he is a pro-life candidate.Is it that easy? He gets a contribution from an organization that Missy Hart describes as "rabidly pro-choice" and that "throws into question" his position on Abortion?
FEC records indicate that lobbyist Altmire’s campaign accepted $3,000 from the National Committee for an Effective Congress (NCEC).* On its own website, the NCEC describes the candidates they support as “progressive candidates who fight for the issues we believe in, like freedom of choice, separation of church and state, gun control …” and in a September 2003 The National Journal referred to the NCEC as the “granddaddy of liberal political action committees.
“Lobbyist Altmire has a lot of explaining to do to all the people he has told he is pro-life. With his experience as a lobbyist, maybe Jason can reconcile his acceptance of this money and his pro-life lip service, but the people of southwestern Pennsylvania will not be fooled,” said Hart campaign manager Luke Myslinski.
“We should not be too surprised by this development, Jason did have pro-choice and liberal superstar Howard Dean in to boost his sagging campaign,” Myslinski added. “The fact that one of his biggest donors is a pro-abortion rights, pro-gun control liberal group is why respected organizations like the NRA and National Right to Life backed Melissa Hart – not him.”
That should come as a pleasant surprise to millions of women across the nation (including the Other Political Junkie) because FEC records also show, for instance, that The National Committee for an Effective Congress also gave money to Bob Casey, jr. and Senator Ben Nelson - hardly the most pro-choice candidates around. But according to Missy's logic, they're stance on choice is now "thrown into question." Thanks, Missy!
But that's not all - there's something else that Missy Hart left out. Prose writes:
[Campaign Spokeswoman Christina] Stacey said the NCEC donation was not monetary but an in-kind contribution for "precinct targeting data" in the May primary. That information was available to all Democrats, "even pro-life Democrats," she said.Turns out that's exactly true (it's way down the bottom of the page - go look).
It's interesting to note that the Hart-folks obviously had enough web-savvy to find the FEC documents about NCEC's "contribution" to Altmire, but wouldn't you know it, they say anything about how FEC documents describe them as "in-kind."
How convenient.
3 comments:
i've gotten a few e-mails from her office and campaign, who knows how they got my address unless it was the few times months ago that i e-mailed my displeasure over something.
NCEC provides demographic research on their district to any Democratic nominee, which counts as an in-kind contribution.
Missy shares more than just her radical agenda with Santorum, she shares his pit bull media consultant. I would guess that BrabenderCox is as much responsible for this as Melissa is; they've worked closely together for years to twist and spin and, well, lie.
In the end, they know that more people see the initial report or TV commercial or radio spot than the one that attempts to refute it. Besides, they want to get Altmire spending his money fighting back...rather than letting him set the tone for the campaign.
Also, never forget that we live in a media culture which thrives on the most salacious bits. Why do Anna Nichol and Britney and Cruise dominiate the front page of CNN? Because that's what people WANT! You know as well as I do that if no one was clicking those links, they wouldn't be there....but they are. It's the same reason the TV stations do "dead puppy" stories during sweeps; they work! The same goes for political commercials. The more outrageous the better. Tell the big lie. Spin the tall tale. With a vacuous electorate and a short time frame...you can get away with almost anything....
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