A right-of-center blogger and strategist I know made an interesting point on Twitter, with regard to tomorrow's teabagging parties:
OFA and MoveOn isn't astroturf... but FreedomWorks is. Come on. If this were them, it would be far more centralized & organized #teaparty
This seems like a suitable time to remind folks of how Dick Armey's "grassroots group" obtained it's membership: through illegal fraud. From the Washington Post:
In 2001, Jennifer B. Chace heard an insurance broker's pitch for a new insurance company marketing tax-free medical savings accounts. She jumped at the offer, but first, the broker told her, she would have to sign an application -- already filled out -- that would entitle her to a low group rate.
With that signature, Chace, a Florida dentist in the market for health insurance, unwittingly joined one of Washington's most prominent conservative organizations, Citizens for a Sound Economy, she would later testify.
"Before I showed you this form today, did you even realize that you signed a form that was an application for membership in Citizens for a Sound Economy?" her lawyer would ask during a 2004 deposition.
"I don't know what Citizens for a Sound Economy is," she replied.
Chace's experience has brought to light an obscure arrangement between a prominent Republican businessman, J. Patrick Rooney, and a free-market interest group that has netted the grass-roots organization hundreds of thousands of dollars and thousands of new members. Citizens for a Sound Economy -- now called FreedomWorks and headed by former House majority leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) -- has netted more than $638,000 and about 16,000 members through the sale of insurance policies.
And unlike OFA and MoveOn, FreedomWorks is not funded by the grassroots. It's funded by giant corporations who pay it to create the illusion of grassroots support around issues that real people would never actually rally around. From Common Cause:
Post-merger, the Astroturf lobbying continues. FreedomWorks has accepted corporate contributions from telephone giants Verizon and SBC (now AT&T).
...FreedomWorks is also on the record supporting the telecommunications industry's position on network neutrality. Broadband Internet companies like Verizon and AT&T would like to create "tiers" or "lanes" on the information superhighway: Their own content and services would be delivered using the fast lane; companies like Google and Amazon would be charged high fees to travel in the middle lane; and the rest of the web would be relegated to the slow lane.
Can you hear the masses now? "Give me a slow Internet!" "Stop taxing the rich!" "Stop Obama from giving 95% of working families a tax cut!" "Cut capital gains taxes for AIG execs, and trick me into joining your email list while you're at it!"
Two weeks ago, I called attention to some informal advising of the McCain campaign being done by my namesake Karl Rove. Rove attempted to keep scrutiny at bay by repeatedly comparing his relationship to campaign officials as casual "chit chat," though his own words from a February appearance at the University of Pennsylvania remain indicting (excuse me, I just like to use that word whenever possible when discussing Rove):
He should take a biographical tour to the places in the country that have made him who he is. Go to the Naval Academy and talk about the values he learned there. Then he should go to Pensacola, Florida and Corpus Christi, Texas where he was trained as a naval aviator, and talk from the heart and the call to service. Go to Meridien, Mississippi and Jacksonville, Florida and talk about what he learned about leadership commanding the largest naval air squadron in the United States...And he should give a speech in Sedona, Arizona and talk about the people and places in his hometown that affected him.
The coincidence of this advice and McCain's subsequent Service to America tour caught my eye, and more recently that of the National Journal, whose Peter Stone has uncovered even more indicting evidence of Rovism within the McCain camp:
After leaving the White House in August, for example, he restarted his old consulting firm, Karl Rove & Co., which has been widely distributing projections of the nation's electoral map for 2008. Some of these maps-branded with the firm's name-were prominently displayed at a March briefing by the McCain campaign's then-top media adviser, Mark McKinnon, according to Salon.
Recent developments revolve around Rove's connection with the conservative political action group Freedom's Watch. Board member William Weidner told the Journal that Rove had been advising the organization's strategy, which figures to play as heavily in the POTUS08 campaign as funds will allow. Rove has made sure to stay close to those funds as well, maintaining an advisory relationship to Freedom's Watch's principal financial backer, Las Vegas casino magnate (and notorious union buster) Sheldon Adelson. Make no mistake, the 527 campaign against Barack Obama will get lower, nastier and more Rovian with each dollar Bush's Brain can squeeze from plutocrat Adelson.
So Karl Rove has taken to advising the presidential campaign of John McCain from outside and in. Check out the extended entry for an updated timeline on the architect's blueprints...
The biggest unknown in Congressional races this season is Freedom's Watch, the shadowy right-wing group that claims it is going to spend $250M on Congressional campaigns. Shadowy is actually an overstatement, since it is well-known that it is right-wing billionaires like casino magnate Sheldon Adelson who are putting up the money.
Today Freedom's Watch is launching an ad campaign targeting specific Democrats in their districts, urging them to continue funding for the Iraq war. Below is a brief summary of Freedom's Watch and then below the jump is a discussion of the ad campaign as it relates to the Bush Dogs.
What is Freedom's Watch?
Freedom's Watch is a group hoping to be a Right-Wing Move On.
Their mission as they describe it atop every email is this:
For too long, we have been without a steady voice for mainstream conservative values. Freedom’s Watch, a new nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC, seeks to fill that void. Freedom’s Watch promotes peace through strength and prosperity through free enterprise. It is dedicated to advancing public policies that protect America’s interests domestically and abroad, foster economic prosperity, and strengthen families.
While they spin themselves as being grass roots, and the voice of the public, that is absolutely not the case. If anything the tainted white house has outsourced its media blitz:
The group, which is “funded by high-profile Republicans who were aides and supporters of President Bush,” is headed by a familiar face from the Bush war effort: former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer.
See Think Progress: http://thinkprogress.org/2007/08/22/ari-fleischer-returns/
[Note: Sorry the hyperlinks are not working, I do not know why; the paragraph breaks show up correct in the preview and then do not operate correctly in the post-Gremlins]
More on the ad campaign below the flip....
