Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Vets For Freedom Update- Fla. Dems Circulate GOP Candidate's SSN; I Hate Illinois Nazis; Bull in a China Shop

You might recall me mentioning something about the Veteran's for Freedom PAC earlier this year.

Now that the primaries are over and done with, seven of the ten candidates that are part of Vets for Freedom's Operation 10 in 10 have advanced to face their opponents in the general election.

And with barely a month to go until the mid-term elections, it seems that the incumbents in at least three of the races with VFF-backed candidates are getting increasingly desperate- if not incoherent.

FL-22: The Florida Democratic Party sent out at least 10,000 mailers last week showing legal documents pertaining to a tax lien against Allen West with the headline “Allen West has a tax plan: You pay yours. He’ll skip out on his,”. West's address was redacted on the mailer, but his social security number and his wife's employer identification number were still visible.

West's opponent, incumbent Congressman Joe Klein, has denied any involvement in the mailings and asked that all further inquiries be directed to the Florida Democratic party.

The state Democratic Party communications director issued a classic non-apology apology in the wake of circulating West's social security number.
“After making every effort to remove all of Allen West’s private information, unlike West who refuses to apologize to Florida’s taxpayers for not paying his taxes and his bills, we apologize for the oversight of not redacting this information from the public record included in the mailer. To end, while this mail piece does not explicitly identify any Social Security number, in order to stop the crazy West accusations, we will pay for identify theft monitoring for the next two years.”
By his own admission, West had owed around $11,000 in back taxes in 2005, but paid them off a few months later. At the time, Alan West was a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army.

Even if I was inclined to give the Democrats the benefit of the doubt (and I've stopped doing that loooooong ago), this would have to be a Guinness Book of World Records-setting cock-up in a close Congressional election. Nothing conveys the message of 'We're trustworthy and responsible individuals you should feel good about voting for' than publishing the social security number of a private citizen and acting like a petulant child when called out for it. And that's if I choose to attribute the Florida Democrat's actions to simple ineptitude rather than dripping malice.

NY-20 Speaking of mailers, Congressman Scott Murphy of Upstate New York's 20th Congressional district is mailing out some nice ones promoting himself on your dime, no less.

Murphy's also taken to advertising on conservative radio stations in the district touting himself as a champion of small business and a fiscal conservative while apparently hoping that his constituents forgot that he voted for Cap and Trade, Obamacare and the Stimulus.

Both Scott Murphy and his GOP (and VFF) challenger, retired Army Colonel Chris Gibson, ran unopposed in the New York state primaries. This saved both of them considerable money by not having to deal with intra-party fighting while focusing their attention on the November campaign. While Murphy has a considerable war chest of donations from unions, the DCCC and various liberal PACs as well as his own personal fortune, but Gibson's been getting much more support from individual donors.

To be fair, Murphy has yet to send out mailers with Gibson's SSN# or had his campaign volunteers marching around with life-size posters comparing him to nazis. But with that in mind, you'd think the Murphy campaign could put their money towards more coherent ads. Even the Albany Times-Union, no foe of the Democrat party, had a hard time trying to explain a TV ad that claimed Gibson wanted to create jobs in China by allowing the Bush-era tax cuts to continue across the board.....in fact, I think they gave up about halfway through.

Using Murphy's logic, I suppose the incumbent is even more eager to send jobs off to China thanks in large part to the 'Green Jobs' provision in the Cap & Trade bill. Already, restrictions have closed down the last remaining incandescent light bulb plant in the USA, leaving the majority of the newer CFL's to be made in China. That's in addition to the majority of solar panel manufacturers and the components for wind turbines being located in China and Europe.

Come to think of it, how come Murphy hasn't touted his votes in favor of cap and trade or Obamacare? When they first passed, the media assured us how popular these bills would be- so why does the incumbent want nothing to do with those votes now?

IL-11: Video has surfaced on Andrew Breitbart's Big Government website of a group of protesters chanting and picketing an Americans for Prosperity event in Joliet, IL earlier this month. That in and of itself wouldn't be noteworthy if it weren't for a few pivotal details. Among the signs the picketers carried were ones that depicted former Alaksa Gov. Sarah Palin, talk show host Glen Beck and GOP/VFF Challenger to Congresswoman Debbie Halvorson, former Air Force captain Adam Kinzinger, with Hitler moustaches that read "Nazi-Tea Party".

Granted, invoking Godwin's Law from the get-go is hardly unusual for Dems in the last decade or so, and it would be easy to dismiss them as a kooky vocal fringe minority who have nothing to do with the candidate herself were it not for the fact that the protesters headed over to Halvorson's Joliet office later on where staffers unlocked the doors for them and let them store their signs and placards there overnight.

Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit was able to identify at least one of the protesters as a member of Obama's Organizing for America who was seen earlier at town hall meetings for Missouri congressman Russ Carnahan ushering in union members through a building's handicapped entrance.

[Hat tip: Big Government, Upstate Political Report, Gateway Pundit]

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