One GOP mailing received this week: “Elizabeth Warren says she’ll fight Wall Street banks. So why does she support the Wall Street bailout?” Another anti Elizabeth Warren mailing received this week: “No other candidate in 2012 represents a greater threat to free enterprise than Professor Warren.”
Seriously Republican smear machine, you have to pick only one of these lies and distortions. You cannot claim at the same time that she’s for Wall Street and she’s a threat to free enterprise.
Can someone in the mainstream press be kind enough to point out the obvious problem here in attacking Warren for being both pro Wall Street and anti free enterprise?
It’s sort of like the hard right trying to attack Obama because he’s too close to Trinity United Church of Christ Pastor Jeremiah Wright, and then conducting the whisper campaign that he’s a secret Muslim. You can only use one of these smears.
Of course, both claims against Elizabeth Warren are a lie. Scott Brown isn’t the number-one recipient of financial firm donations because Elizabeth Warren is for Wall Street. And to say she’s a threat to free enterprise is ludicrous, unless you believe “free enterprise” is a synonym for “total deregulation that allows predatory firms to bring our financial system to the brink of collapse.” What she is for is a properly regulated capitalist system that works for everyone, not just the powerful few — which is why she was endorsed by Republican former FDIC chair Sheila Bair.
No, Scott Brown’s supporters are just frantically slinging mud in hopes that something, anything will stick. And while it’s never OK to allow lies to go unchallenged, that’s especially so when the lies actually cancel each other out.
Obama is both Hitler and Stalin.
Godwin’s_law on the very first comment. Don’t waste any time.
I’m pretty sure the comment was intended to be ironic, and is therefore exempt from Godwin’s Law.
D’OH!!!!
It was meant to be ironic, but it’s true these people don’t care if their attacks contradict each other. They figure people will hear one attack and be very scared. They’re hoping the people won’t hear the other attacks at all, or at least won’t put together any inconsistency.
In their best-case scenario the people will say “Obama’s like Hitler AND he’s like Stalin. He must be really bad.” Or “Elizabeth Warren wants to destroy free enterprise AND hand out bailout to Wall Street.” Yikes! I guess she wants even Wall Street on government dependency. Gosh, Mitt was right.
I wish we lived in a world of informed citizens demanding logic and facts in political discourse, but right now we live in a world where Mitt Romney can change all his positions anytime he likes and still be within striking distance of the White House. It’s messed up.
Scott Brown’s campaign right now reminds me of badly crafted spam. You know, the emails with misspelled words and bad grammar trying to convince you it came from your bank so you”ll click on their link and enter your user name and password. Really? My bank doesn’t know how to spell or write a correct sentence? And I can’t mouse over your link and see that it goes to some address that doesn’t at all resemble the name of my bank?
Spam is annoying and phishing attempts are annoying. But if you’re going to waste my time and bandwidth, show some respect; make an effort to do it properly. It’s an insult to assume I’m either ignorant or clueless.
And that’s just what Brown and his supporters are doing when they send these contradictory attack ads to me within the same week — insulting me by assuming I’m too clueless to remember what they said they day before. Kind of like the Romney campaign, come to think of it….
But that’s what they’ve got. They sure as hell don’t want to talk about their policy positions.
…but look at all those “czars” he has appointed! Never mind that the Bolshevik revolution had the effect of unemploying the Russian royal family.
… but rather to increase the overall level of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) in order to either A) increase the number of voters doing the deed under the influence of cognitive dissonance and 2) decrease the number of rational voters… I’d say the more implausibly contradictory things they say the more successful the strategery.