Scott Brown voted against the DISCLOSE ACT yesterday. But Dan Winslow, R-Norfolk carried the water for him, saying, with knotted brow, that Elizabeth Warren’s supposed lack of openness about her background was “deeply troubling.” He then said that Brown opposed the finance transparency bill with a filibuster of the DISCLOSE ACT and considered it to be “false reform.” See it in today’s Sun Chronicle.
It would seem that Winslow is now the surrogate spokesman for Brown since the staff is probably tired of fixing all his gaffs. So the next time Dan has a town hall meeting we can now ask him who on Wall Street is financing Brown’s campaign since Brown hasn’t bothered to tell us because that would be false reform.
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But come election season, people get carried away.
Disclosing the sources of campaign money is one of the few issues that the country is pretty united on. We don’t like secrecy and we know that corporations and billionaires are buying elections.
And still, our Massachusetts Senator, Scott Brown, voted against the DISCLOSE Act for the second time.
Yet The Globe’s online story bears this headline: Campaign cash disclosures again at center of partisan Senate debate
And in today’s hard copy Globe newspaper the story, on the bottom of page A9, bears this headline: GOP again blocks bid for ad disclosure bill
Where is Scott Brown in the story? Second paragraph from the end. In other words, our own senator’s vote, which is contrary to the wishes of most Massachusetts voters, is barely mentioned.
Coverage like this is the reason that the race is so close. In fact, Republic Report ran a story about the Brown-Warren coverage with this headline: The Associated Press Equates Scott Brown’s Secret Meetings With Lobbyists And Elizabeth Warren’s Heritage
Here’s the link: http://www.republicreport.org/2012/the-associated-press-equivocates-scott-browns-secret-meetings-with-lobbyists-to-elizabeth-warrens-heritage/
Is it that the Warren campaign and its surrogates don’t jump on issues in an aggressive or serious enough way, e.g. Dem video on Brown and the kings & queens meetings, or The Globe doesn’t cover it?
This is a custom-made issue for EW. Where is she?
“Citizens United unleashed a wave of special interest spending that threatens to drown out the voices of middle class families. The DISCLOSE Act will provide accountability, requiring that those who fund political advertising make their support public. It’s time for Scott Brown and the Republicans to stop protecting their influential friends by helping them hide their influence from the public.”
Elizabet Warren, yesterday.
http://www.facebook.com/ElizabethWarren
One that I did not see or hear in any Boston papers, TV or radio.
And that is my point.
There is no sense of what what should be growing, widespread doubts about Brown based on both his pro-business/anti-consumer votes and his regular fabrications about what he’s done.
I’m not saying she’s not saying it; I’m saying the campaign is not getting the coverage it needs. Nothing Brown says or does has legs in the media, and voting against the DISCLOSE Act is a perfect example of that.
Ironically the one thing Brown has done that has increased his negatives was his harping on Warren’s heritage. Of course it increased her negatives by a far greater amount.
Don’t get me wrong – I support such a law. However, it’s time to start calling out people who oppose this as political cowards. For example, the National Rifle Association saw fit to rate this as a gun rights vote, because apparently they don’t want everyone to know how they’re spending political money. If they refuse to come out and say, “We’re the NRA and we support Joe Smith for Senate because he’ll protect our rights,” that’s telling.
The NRA (and other interest groups) have long given preference to incumbents in their endorsements as a tool to increase their clout. That is, if you’re the incumbent and you’ve mostly been supporting the agenda, you get the endorsement, even if your challenger would be just as good or better on the issue. Despite their supposed non-partisaness, the NRA clearly prefers Republicans. In the post Citizen United world, I wonder if they’ve been secretly undermining pro-gun Dems that they’re nominally backing? Thus the Dems still do their bidding to get the endorsement and the NRA funnels money to defeat them nevertheless.