Is this ad from Gabriel Gomez coming soon to your TV? Gomez released the ad on YouTube yesterday; it was scheduled to start running on television statewide today. (I was able to see the ad a couple of hours ago but YouTube later said the video was unavailable; it remains up on Gomez’s campaign website.) In it, the narrator accuses “Dirty Ed Markey” of comparing Gomez to Osama bin Laden and blaming Gomez for Newtown. In other words, more baseless whining that should be transparent to anyone who understands the English language.
As discussed here, Markey’s recent ad does not “blame” Gomez for Newtown. It says that one of the proposed responses to the Newtown shooting and other massacres has been to limit high-capacity clips, “like the one” used in Newtown. And it shows Gomez, on television in his own words, saying he does not support such a proposal. That’s it.
Likewise, it has been shown that the bin Laden claim is absurd. It refers to Markey’s May 2 video criticizing Gomez for his 2012 swift-boating of President Obama. That video (which is kind of awkwardly done) showed Gomez for a moment in a split screen with bin Laden, but also showed him in a split screen with three separate images of President Obama and with a fellow guest on MSNBC. Gomez did not call Markey “despicable” for comparing him to the President or the fellow guest. It takes a Professional Whiner to turn that video into a “comparison” of Gomez and bin Laden. (Making this claim particularly rich is that the footage of bin Laden in Markey’s video actually was taken from…the video Gomez and his Tea Party friends made to criticize Obama.)
Seems Gomez is hoping that voters will recoil from “Dirty Ed Markey’s” dirty tactics without actually watching and evaluating the ads in question. But the Globe, which I’ve not hesitated to criticize, has called Gomez on his bullshit. A piece by Michael Levenson yesterday states, straight up:
Despite what the ad says, Markey has not blamed Gomez for the Newtown shooting. Markey has released an ad that highlights Gomez’s opposition to an assault weapons ban and to limits on high-capacity magazines, “like the ones used in the Newtown school shooting.”
Markey has also released an online video that shows an image of bin Laden next to an image of Gomez. The Gomez campaign has demanded that Markey take down the video, saying that the juxtaposition is a disgrace since Gomez is a former Navy Seal.
The Markey campaign has pushed back by pointing out that the bin Laden image comes from a video produced by the Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund, a group that accused President Obama of trying to exploit the killing of bin Laden for political gain. Gomez was a supporter of the group, appearing on MSNBC in August 2012 to defend OPSEC and speaking to Reuters about its activities.
(emphasis added)
It is heartening to see the press, for once, doing its job rather than engaging in false equivalence and “he said-he said” with no attempt to identify the truth. Kudos to Mr. Levenson. (Sadly, no such critical evaluation from the Springfield Republican, which at least was nice enough to update its post to include the Markey campaign’s response to this new ad.)
Calling Gomez on his bullshit might become a trend on Morrissey Blvd. Levenson and Josh Miller also have a story in the Globe entitled “Markey hits back against Gomez attacks,” concerning the line (first tried by Steve Lynch in the last debate before the primary) that Gomez and his new pal John McCain have been peddling: that Markey’s soft on homeland security because he voted against resolutions to “honor the 9/11 victims” in 2004 and 2006.
In Gomez’s own words (uh oh, now I’ll be “Dirty Fenway49” for quoting him):
“One thing that I just can’t understand is how my opponent, Congressman Markey, has voted more than once against a very basic Congressional resolution, to simply honor the victims of 9/11. To me it’s just unconscionable to have voted against something like that.”
The Globe piece allows Markey to rebut this absurd claim effectively:
Markey has emphasized that he voted for several similar resolutions commemorating the tragedy, but argues that those two attempted to politicize it.
“I voted eight times to honor the 9/11 victims,” Markey said. “When Dick Cheney and his allies sought to exploit a resolution by linking 9/11 to the war in Iraq, I voted no. And I would do it again.”
For a great takedown of this bullshit (sorry to keep using the word but no other applies), see David S. Bernstein in his new Boston Magazine gig. Bernstein takes no position on the resolutions, but he notes they were symbolic and voted on in “offered in the fall of highly contentious election years.” More importantly, he invites his readers to read them (noting that Gomez is always saying “read the bill”). Anyone who does so will see, in short order, that they were written less to “honor the 9/11 victims” than to cheerlead for the Bush-Cheney foreign policy and the pile of anti-terrorism legislation passed by the GOP Congress after the 2001 attack.
For example, the 2004 resolution reads, in part:
Whereas three years after September 11, 2001, the UnitedStates is fighting a Global War on Terrorism to protect America and her friends and allies; Whereas since the United States was attacked, it has led aninternational military coalition in the destruction of two terrorist regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq…* * *Whereas to date United States Armed Forces and Coalition forces have killed or captured 43 of the 55 most wanted criminals of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, including Saddam Hussein himself; Whereas the al-Zarqawi terror network used Baghdad as a base of operations to coordinate the movement of people,money, and supplies;
The 2006 resolution contains this language:
Whereas in the days subsequent to the brutal attacks on the Nation, the Government vowed never to be caught off guard again, to take the fight to the terrorists, and to take immediate measures to prepare and protect the Nation against a new type of faceless, inhuman, and amorphous enemy committed to the death and destruction of the American way of life;
Whereas Congress passed, and the President signed, numerous laws to assist victims, combat the forces of terrorism,protect the Homeland and support the members of the Armed Forces who defend American interests at home and abroad, including the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001and its 2006 reauthorization, the Homeland Security Act of 2002, the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002, the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002, and the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004;Whereas the House of Representatives in the 109th Congress passed the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, the SAFE Port Act of 2006, and the 21st Century Emergency Communications Act of 2006…
So, Gabe, you call that “a very basic Congressional resolution, to simply honor the victims of 9/11?” I’d have less respect for Ed Markey if he HAD voted in favor of this dreck.
Gabriel Gomez likes to claim he’s a new kind of Republican. But he seems like a standard-issue one to me: demagogue on terror and 9/11, get rich by outsourcing jobs to child labor in China, file sketchy tax returns, treat the “little people” like crap, and, now, play victim at every turn.
Claim a (non-existent) foul on the other guy, in this case negative campaigning, then commit the foul yourself.
Republican Dishonest!
The words are interchangeable.
David Bernstein tweeted the other day that this ad was likely just setting the stage for all the negative anti-Markey ads that are coming from the NRSC and affiliated super-PACs. This way, Gomez can claim that Markey went negative first and uninformed voters will get the message that “both sides are doing it”. Clever, but I don’t think it works in MA. Remember, in his first election Scott Brown ran a relatively positive campaign — all soft-focus ‘I’m a guy just like you who drives a truck’ ads. When Coakley went negative on him it didn’t stick.
when Brown himself went negative in 2012. In this case, the complaints against Markey collapse under the slightest investigation. I don’t imagine too many of the undecided voters in Massachusetts will look into the facts, but that’s why I’m pleased to see the Globe making a clear statement that Gomez’s charge is false.
At the end of the 2009 special election campaign, Coakley’s people panicked. They made a major error when they ran negative ads without first doing focus groups.
I doubt that Gabriel Gomez is making that same mistake. He’s probably run focus groups on these ads, and he’s probably done polling. He knows that these ads will be effective for the audience that he is targetting.
These ads are a real problem for Markey.
I’d give him the same benefit of the doubt if his campaign was being otherwise intelligently run, but it hasn’t been, so…
I wonder if you have perhaps created an unintentional non sequitor in your comment.
Perhaps I have a different assessment of Massachusetts voters than you, but it seems to me that the voters who will respond positively to these ads are low-information, low-curiosity voters from the extreme right of the spectrum. By “low-curiosity”, I mean voters who not only don’t know the facts, but in fact don’t even want to know the facts.
While I grant you that this ad may do well in focus groups comprised of those voters, I need to believe that such voters are very rare in Massachusetts. If that were not the case, surely the GOP would do better here. I have no doubt that this particular group is loud — enough to dominate talk radio and the boston.com comment sections — but I just don’t think there are very many of them.
I therefore think that these ads may not be as significant a problem as you suggest.
His ads are not especially great. For instance, take the stupid ad which ends with him essentially mouthing the Pledge of Allegiance in front of a semi-bored audience. Are you telling me that you think that focus groups just love that ad? I think not.
Voters aren’t idiots and they are going to notice when an ad starts out by slamming the other candidate for running a negative ad (which astute viewers will remember wasn’t really all that negative and featured videos of Gomez making crystal clear statements of his positions) and then immediately goes negative itself.
These ads are second rate and unlike Scott Brown’s ads, they do absolutely nothing to make Gomez seem like a regular likable guy. After the bogus tax deduction story came out, he really needs to find some way to deflect the growing impression that he is just another self-entitled rich guy.
with those pointing out that Gomez’s campaign thus far has not been a top-flight operation. The new ad isn’t that great and the fact that virtually everyone’s calling the allegations false won’t help.