Fox News tweets:
US Chamber chief says group will be “significantly involved” in Mass. Senate race: Scott Brown v. Elizabeth Warren
You know what? Good. I don’t think the US Chamber realizes how utterly out of touch it is even with much of American business, to say nothing of Massachusetts voters. Every dollar the US Chamber spends on this Senate race simply demonstrates how terrified the crony capitalists who run that joint are of Elizabeth Warren. Their pathetic attack ads – which we could all write ourselves since we all know exactly what they will say – won’t be particularly effective, and will be a terrific foil for Warren’s own fundraising.
So bring it on, US Chamber. Let’s see the best you’ve got. I’m betting it’s going to suck.
merrimackguy says
To the point of when they have candidate events during election years they often forget to invite the Republicans.
This might be mostly my own local chamber, the Merrimack Valley one, but I have heard it’s a very similar story in other parts of the state.
johnk says
that’s all he had been doing instead of open town hall meetings.
sabutai says
The US Chamber and Mass. Chamber are two different organizations, and don’t always have the same goals. For example, the state chapter in Montana is miffed that the US Chamber is targeting Senator Tester. I realize you’re casting about for an attack line, but the two bodies shouldn’t be conflated.
johnk says
so now we got Karl Rove and the Koch Brothers with Scott Brown.
Christopher says
Chambers usually invite current elected officials to things like legislative breakfasts, not candidates, so to the extent the delegation has been Democratic so will the invite list be. It is also important to note that the local Chambers are NOT mini-me US Chambers. Local Chambers are often the good guys who promote business, tourism, and culture within a given area. They are proud and conscientious citizens of their respective communities. The US Chamber has a tendency toward the 1% both in actual wealth and in attitude. In fact, a few local chambers have made a public show of disaffiliating with the US Chamber over the latter’s recent policy and political leanings.
Bob Neer says
The regressives, naive, and out of touch are very ably represented at the moment by Scott Brown. We don’t need to invite more support for them. Elizabeth Warren remains, by far, the underdog in this race, recent fundraising success notwithstanding. Massachusetts has a very poor record of electing women to high office, she is running against an incumbent, and Brown has enormous financial advantage. Scott Brown, in particular, is masterful at masking his true identity as a second-generation professional politician and effective Republican legislator behind a carefully coiffed telegenic veneer and his “earnest, well-meaning bumbler” political identity.
merrimackguy says
The specific event I went to they had only candidates (some of course incumbents) though, and specifically failed to invite several R’s. When quizzed later they said they forgot.
I am only responding to the “Chamber as a bogeyman” theme. The US Chamber does spout a conservative line, but the organization’s MA chapters are much less so.
On the Republican side they have a similar view of the League of Women Voters, and locally the Andover head resigned over the anti-Scott Brown ads put out by the national office under the guise of voter education.
SomervilleTom says
The headline isn’t “Chamber as a bogeyman”. It is quite specific: “US Chamber of Commerce”.
The US Chamber of Commerce is a totally independent entity. So is the MA Chamber of Commerce. So is the Chamber in your town.
Unlike the League of Women Voters, the US Chamber of Commerce most emphatically is not the “national office” of anything except the “US Chamber of Commerce”.
historian says
Get all the coal and gas quick–burn it all -fast! Who cares if we destroy the climate.
http://thinkprogress.org/green/2012/01/12/403261/tom-donohue-pushes-civilization-ending-pollution-agenda-in-chamber-of-commerce-annual-address/
JHM says
I thought the following, which I hereby swipe from The New Republicanine, was pretty much on target:
Mr. Poster is of course correct to distinguish the CCUSA, that wannabe Juggernaut, from the small-town pettybiz volks in front of whom ‘Mittens’ feels so comfy.
The latter will, I suspect, feel swindled (¡yet again!) once their supposed buddy makes it into the White House: the Babbits of Nashua were scarcely the primary beneficiaries of Bain Capital.
Happy days.
merrimackguy says
or can’t even tell who the Chamber is.
JHM says
Or anyway, a famous remark dug up in a totally different connection:
« Mes chers frères, n’oubliez jamais, quand vous entendrez vanter le progrès des lumières, que la plus belle des ruses du Diable est de vous persuader qu’il n’existe pas ! »
Like the rich-out-of-sight Class which it services, the CCUSA functions best when hardly anybody not directly concerned notices that it is around, let alone carefully distinguishes it from those boondocks organizations with a similar name..
It follows, I think, that when one finds Dr. Limbaugh compelled to defend Finance Capitalism expressly, as he has been doin’ all this week [*], things cannot be goin’ too well for our TopPercenters.
Happy days.
__
[*] WXKS AM 1200, Newton-Boston, 1200-1500 EST Monday through Friday.
(( The Witch Doctor of Democracy is especially fun, for me, whenever he gets goin’ on Chicagonomics: he always seems to totter on the brink of not actually understandin’ the product he is paid to move. ))