Thanks to the Incomparable Daily Howler, we can see what the press narrative for Theresa Heinz Kerry will be and how the RNC will get it ginning in the papers. Apparently, all it takes is an email.
In the same post you can also see that the narrative for Sen. Kerry will include him being a slave to the "special interests". Those words must have polled high on a list of terms that make voters angry.
Rutenberg repeats the content of this ad, and brightly notes that it’s an “attack.” But he is too inept to let readers know that this ad’s attack is utterly false. Does Kerry take “more special interest money than any other senator?” No, and the (hapless) Washington Post piece which led to this ad never made such an assertion. According to Peter Beinart, Kerry ranks ninety-second among U.S. senators when it comes to special interest money. Meanwhile, at his Annenberg “FactCheck” site, Brooks Jackson shot down this ad’s bogus claim too. (He shot it down ten days ago!) Is Kerry first among senators in special interest dough, raising $640,000 in the last fifteen years? Please. “So far, for example, Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist reported $1,022,063 in PAC donations for his 2004 campaign alone,” Jackson notes. The Bush ad’s claim is utterly bogus. Rutenberg, typing hard, failed to say so.
But then, the New York Times deals in the factesque. The RNC send out a fake claim, so Rutenberg sat right down and typed it! Meanwhile, one last note, from the Annals of Clowning: When Rutenberg went on to discuss last week’s rumor from Drudge, he applauded the press for “not tak[ing] the bait.” But he’d been yanked from the water himself, ten grafs earlier! This year it matters, Gail Collins has said. But at the Times, hopeless habits die hard.
This is scary though because the natural way to combat the 'special interest whore' label is to say that the other guys are bigger whores. That's how voter turnout gets surpressed or wanders over to Ralph and that's a big part of that the GOP is banking on.
On Ralph: I wish he had found another way to get his very valuable message out there this year because, setting aside vote splitting, I think his presence on any ballot will give the RNC extra wiggle room when the e-voting results start to stream in. But I'm uncomfortable with telling him he can't run if that's what he believes is the best thing for the country. I'd like to see as many parties on the ballot as possible - using that 15% rule or whatever is the threshold for interest.
After a long search, I finally found your site. My granny used to say, that you must never give up to reach a certain aim.
So keep on going like I did it recently.
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