MoveOn.org Political Action plans to unveil a TV ad on Monday that questions whether Roberts is sensitive enough to civil rights concerns to lead the Supreme Court. The ad suggests that the plight of the mostly African-American evacuees in New Orleans showed that poverty remains a serious problem among minorities, said Ben Brandzel, the group's advocacy director. In a mix of judicial and racial politics, the ad then suggests that minorities could suffer if the Senate confirms Roberts.Wait, MoveOn.org is using Katrina pictures to promote its political agenda? But I remember this, from the 2004 campaign season:
Liberal online political activist group MoveOn.org is using testimony from former White House counterterrorism head Richard Clarke in a new political ad to promote their anti-Bush agenda.I'm lawyer enough to know how to make the argument that that is not rank hypocrisy, but, man, that is rank hypocrisy!
In the ad, MoveOn.org accuses President George W. Bush of politicizing September 11 by using images from the World Trade Center Towers in a recent campaign commercial.
"George Bush shamelessly exploited 9/11 in his campaign commercials," the announcer states at the beginning of the ad.
UPDATE: The USAToday article now has a link to this update:
A liberal interest group Thursday denied it ever planned to use televised images of poverty-stricken evacuees from Hurricane Katrina as part of a provocative, last-minute effort to divert federal Judge John Roberts' path to confirmation as chief justice.
MoveOn.org Political Action's advocacy director Ben Brandzel had laid out plans for such an ad to USA TODAY on Wednesday. But Thursday, the group's executive director said "we regret any misunderstanding that may have arisen because of anything that our staff member might have told USA TODAY's reporter."
"We have no plans, and have never had plans, to produce such an ad," Eli Pariser added.
Hmmmm.... So what do you think? Never planned to do it or saw the criticism and changed?
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Ann, in the annals of hypocritical poltical ads, where do you suppose this one ranks juxtaposed to the elder Bush's 'Willie Horton" ad from 1988?
Yeah, but Bush did it for partisan reasons. MoveOn is doing it for good of the country. It's just sort of incidental that what's good for the country happens in all cases to be what's good for the Democratic party. Partisanism is only self-interested if you're on the evil side.
P.S. If it takes you longer than five minutes to find a Republican who thinks the same way, you're not looking real hard.
but, man, that is rank hypocrisy!
You almost sound surprised...
There is more than one irony here:
The claim that Roberts is a civil-rights ogre is based on his opposition to open, institutionalized racial discrimination (affirmative action and race-based set-asides).
With the revelations of how badly Blanco and Nagin dropped the ball on the evacuation, keeping relief supplies out of NOLA, failing to send National Guard reinforcements, etc, the same people who told us the Patriot Act was a page out of Mein Kampf are rapidly being reduced to the argument that the President's great sin was hesitating to remove the lawful government of a state at gunpoint.
As more inconvenient facts continue to emerge, this is going to backfire on MoveOn.org and friends, big time.
What is "hypocritical" about drawing attention to a bad policy of your opponent during an election campaign?
You might argue that the Willie Horton ad was inappropriate, but it was not "hypocritical" (BTW, the Bush campaign itself never ran an ad mentioning or depicting Horton, although one of their MoveOn-like fellow-travellers did).
The Horton ad would have been hypocritical only if Bush '41 had also administered and supported a similar program that led to women being raped in their homes at knife-point by furloughed murderers.
Prior to Katrina, there was some serious issues with the republican coalition holding together for '06. Smart Democrats like Hillary Clinton were using immigration and other issues to try and drive more wedges in the Coalition.
However, the foaming at the mouth by many democrats and the liberal media over Katrina has done nothing but strengthen the Republican coalition.
If anything, it is stupid strategy by Democrats. Republicans will use this hysteria in '06 to imply that the Democratic party is not a rational party.
MoveOn.org links poverty among blacks in NO to Roberts, Paul Krugman links poverty among blacks in NO to Bush, and so on. I wonder why no one has thought to link poverty among blacks in NO to the long list of Democratic mayors of NO and governors of LA?
But there's really no need for that, for as several posters have pointed out, the Dems are forever washed clean in the blood of Willie Horton.
The whole phenomenon of moveon.org is an odd one. It's positions tend to be extreme but overall the group seems to be embraced by many on the left, including some of the most prominent leaders (Gore, Dean, etc). I can't imagine this plays well with the middle, which is ultimately going to decide elections.
A corollary on the conservative side would be the religious right, which on it's fringes can hold some pretty extreme views, and does carry some weight in the GOP. This was pretty evident in the Terri Schiavo brouhaha, which I felt turned out to the detriment of the GOP image as a whole and also worked as a wedge between "religious" and more libertarian conservatives.
But where the far religious right may act as a wedge within the GOP, moveon.org may turn out to be a wedge between the Democrats and the middle. Ultimately this would result in a more zealous, but smaller, Democratic Party.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if all this energy were not expended on bloviating but on helping the human needs that are very real? Move.on doesn't care that incompetent politicians (ones like the ones they support nationally - the Gov and the Mayor) helped to exacerbate this problem. They also don't seem to care that their type politicians created continued malfeasance - refusing Red Cross aid for the superdome, letting both city and school buses be engulfed in water instead of helping people who they claim to care about get out of town, the list goes on and on and on. But no they want to scream and show to all of us that care only about the short term potential political gain. Now that is real hypocrisy.
RTB Scott pointed out: b) The Willie Horton ad was not prepared by or paid for by or aired by the Bush campaign.
Yep. Point ceded. And the best thing for prominent Democrats to do now would be to hold a press conference and distance themselves from this ad from MoveOn and the whole idea of blaming this on the president.
I'm not going to hold my breath waiting, however. The Democrats can't seem to help themselves from any opportunity to shoot themselves in the foot. And this is coming from someone who would dearly love to see the Democrats succeed.
But I am tired of exchanging one pork-loving, power-grabbing party for another. And so part of me thinks the best option would be for either party to overreach so much that it collapses. And the Democrats are working really hard at it.
Ann, in the annals of hypocritical poltical ads, where do you suppose this one ranks juxtaposed to the elder Bush's 'Willie Horton" ad from 1988?
Grrrr. Al Gore. Remember him? Ran the first Willie Horton ads. His campaign, too --- not a side group.
TW: yufazg. This game isn't as much fun as on Jeff Goldstein's blog.
"Grrrr. Al Gore. Remember him? Ran the first Willie Horton ads."
Colorado Charlie, Are you sure about that? link
MoveOn.org continues to prove that the GOP sleaze machine has no equal. They're such amateurs. And we are the champions!
W00T!
I fully expect that in the distant future MoveOn.org will be proven to have been unwittingly funded and directed by the RNC, just like Terry McAuliffe.
Err, disregard that comment on McAuliffe. There is no proof of anything, except that Terry McAuliffe was not an unwitting GOP stooge.
Are you saying Bush's 9/11 campaign photos weren't rank? Huh.
Fortunately, the Republicans won't stoop to using Katrina to further their own agendas: "It's an old business myth that the Chinese character for 'crisis' combines the characters for 'danger' and 'opportunity.' It doesn't. But I'm not sure anyone's told the Bush administration, judging from this little tidbit in CongressDaily today: '[White House spokesman Trent] Duffy asserted that the vast spending that would be required to address the hurricane's impact adds to the need to change Social Security, which threatens to strain the budget in coming years'."
http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2005/09/every_crisis_an.html
And as to the actual topic, Brando? Any thoughts?
http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2005/
09/every_crisis_an.html
Sorry, I didn't edit that url when I pasted it in.
"...What is truly shameless is the way republicans spin to suggest they are one thing (compassionate) when in fact they advocate for policies that are the opposite (contemptuous)...."
You need to point to examples to prove a statement like this. You just assume that a statement like this is true based on your on bias. To disprove your point, explain why all the poor and downtrodden of New Orleans have been living under Democratic policies and rule for 100 years yet are still poor?
....The “ownership society” doesn’t mean shit if you don’t have wealth already and don’t have an education. It certainly doesn’t mean shit if you’re poor and black.....
If you haven't noticed, Republicans are offering alternatives to the status quo such as School choice and private accounts for social security. With these ideas, poor people would actually own assets that they deserve and would be able to have the choice not to send their kid to a drug riddled school.
In contrast, Democrats are not offering alternatives other than raising taxes for more funding of the same failed policies
Some democrat policies have lifted people out of poverty. However, as a whole, democratic policies keep most people poor and dependent on the government.
Interesting that you hold a fringe group like moveon.org to be the equal of the President of the United States for grossly exploitative tactics. I wonder which one's message is more widespread and offends more people?
.......
The Exalted: The issue I raised is the hypocrisy of MoveOn.org for criticizing Bush for using 9/11 images for political purposes and then using Katrina images for political purposes. You can talk about other things, but please remember that is the point I made so that you don't blunder into criticizing me for saying something I didn't say
Brando, would you care to provide some working links? Or maybe to make an on-topic comment?
The line taken by MoveOn.org was previewed in the comments of Sen. Kennedy that Ann linked to yesterday. It would seem that the same clot of thinkers has now defined the point of attack. Strange though, isn't it that in all the prior research on Roberts no one on the left (caretakers of the poor and downtroden that they are)had thought of this "problem" with his nomination until shaken awake by the Katrina aftermath images and by the political usefulness of these images.
All's fair in politics, including inconsistency. Small minds and hobgoblins you know.
Daniel - I don't listen to Limbaugh very often, but I did today. It was clearly a spoof.
If anything can be seen as shamelessly exploiting a tragedy for political gain, it was George W. Bush selling photographs of himself standing with a bullhorn at Ground Zero to raise money for his re-election campaign. This ad is pretty bad, but it needs to get in line behind that cynical electoral ploy.
If Ann thinks that there is some relavent difference between what Bush did with 9/11 and what Moveon.org is doing with regard to Katrina thereby exculpating Bush from the charge of “shameless exploitation,” then we should also be free to explore whether or not there are any factors that exculpate Moveon.org from a similar charge.
You are missing the point. This is not what her post is about. The post is about a single organization which is/was/might have been engaging in behavior that it had specifically criticized when others engaged in it in the past. It makes no difference whether or not one thinks that the behavior is bad. The question is this: Is it hypocritical to criticize something and then do the same thing yourself?
This is one reason that I do love Ann's blog. She can ask questions like this and end up in the middle. I agree with Freeman, it really doesn't matter whether President Bush did or did not exploit 9/11, but rather whether moveon.org is being hypocritical.
However, jumping into the unintended fray, I do find what moveon.org is doing quite different from what President Bush did with that picture of himself at Ground Zero after 9/11. I see this as no different than John Kerry showing movies of himself (reenacting, it turns out) his exploits in Vietnam. Both were designed to show the candidates at their greatest moments. I think that if you condemn Mr. Bush for his Ground Zero ads, then you have to do the same with Mr. Kerry's Vietnam ads - as they arguably dishonor the 57,000 Americans who died in that war. And, indeed, some Vietnam vets do feel that way, given Mr. Kerry's later antiwar actions.
Nevertheless, I don't fault either Mr. Bush nor Mr. Kerry for trying to show themselves at their finest moments. And note that in both cases, the dead were safely buried and mourned when the ads came out.
I do see a difference here, since many of the dead have not yet been retrieved from that muck filling much of NOLA, more less been identified or buried. More than anything, I fault the timing. A couple of years from now, when a lot more of the facts are out, and after we have mourned our dead, I would think that it would be much more acceptable.
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