The Democratic Party and Mike Coffman

 

Congressman Mike Coffman is up for re-election in 2014.  He represents our 6th Congressional District here in Colorado.

Mike is a veteran, and has served in both the Army and the U.S. Marine Corps.  He is distinguished by having resigned his position as State Treasurer of Colorado to serve a tour of duty in Iraq from 2005 to 2006.

He was elected as Colorado's Secretary of State in 2006, and then elected to the House of Representatives in 2008.

The 6th CD in Colorado is "competitive," and Andrew Romanoff is the Democratic Party candidate.  The advertising supporting Mr. Romanoff will not be engaged in enhancing his image.  Rather, it will work to denigrate Congressman Coffman, portraying him as a bad person.  In marketing parlance, these are "negative ads."

This post will chronicle the advertising that is done against Mike Coffman during the 2014 campaign.  Let's get started!

June 2013 - This is an ad released on Spanish-language radio stations. It is sponsored by the House Majority PAC and tells us about Rep. Coffman's sinister intent. The Spanish-speaking announcer says Congressman Coffman intends to deport 800,000 young people who just want to achieve the American dream:


August 2013 - This ad, sponsored by the League of Conservation Voters, characterizes Rep. Coffman as a person who is unreasonable, keeps his head in the sand, and holds extreme views:


August 2013 - A second ad from the League of Conservation Voters criticizes Rep. Coffman  for holding extremist views, being in the pocket of "Big Oil" and denying climate science:


UPDATE 9/3/2013:
Steven Hayward at Power Line explains the 97% consensus claim made by LCV.

September 2013 - A third ad from the League of Conservation Voters continues the "He's a Denier!" characterization:


October 2013 - The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee begins a radio ad campaign against Mike Coffman.  Here's the script:

(Doorbell rings).

(Male VO): Hello, Congressman Coffman here, just in from Washington.

(Female VO): Uh.  Hi.  Aren’t you supposed to be doing something about that shut down?

(Male VO): I’m here to talk about what I’m doing these days.  First, I’m working hard to take away your new health care benefits.

(Female VO): What?  Congressman Coffman !?!

(Male VO): That’s right.  We’ll put the insurance companies back in charge of your health care.

(Female VO): You’ve got to be kidding me.

(Male VO): Oh we’re dead serious -- so serious that we shut down the government over it.

(Female VO): Congressman Coffman -- that’s just irresponsible.  And, well… reckless.  Oh, and what happens to your health care?

(Male VO): Oh, don’t worry about me.  Voted myself taxpayer-funded healthcare for life!  So I’m taken care of, but thanks for your concern.

(Door slams shut).

(Female VO): Paid for by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, www.dccc.org.  Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is responsible for the content of this advertising.


June 2014 - The VoteVets Action Fund is a 501(c)(4) organization chartered to focus on nonpartisan education and advocacy on behalf of veterans and their families.  While billing itself as non-partisan, VoteVets.org is the largest progressive organization of veterans in America.

It has released this ad which characterizes Representative Coffman as being insensitive to veterans.


While the ad says that Mike Coffman "voted against troop pay," it fails to note that the vote came on the National Defense Authorization Act, which covers diverse social issues such as Marriage and Civil Rights as well as the overall budget for national defense.

Characterizing Mike Coffman as being anti-military is a stretch, but the Democratic Party shows how it is done.

September 2014 - CounterPAC tells us Mike Coffman takes political contributions from unknown sources, that might include Russian oil billionaires, Too-Big-to-Jail Wall Street Bankers and a Chinese Casino Owner!


September 2014 - The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee teaches us that Mike Coffman is a threat to women.


October 2014 - Erica Payne and the Agenda Project use the outbreak of Ebola to demonize Republicans.  The ad flashes a picture of Mike Coffman (at 44 seconds from the beginning) and warns us that Republicans are killers.


October 2014 - The Andrew Romanoff campaign continues the "War on Women" narrative against Congressman Coffman.


November 2014 - Mike Coffman wins re-election 52% to 43% over challenger Andrew Romanoff.

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It's The Culture, Stupid!

January 21, 2008 photo of Bill Clinton by Tami Chappell / Reuters

James Carville coined the phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid” for the 1992 presidential campaign of Bill Clinton.

The phrase comes to mind in the wake of the personal devastation we see from political confrontation with the Democratic Party.  Tuffy Gessling and Mark Ficken are casualties at the 2013 Missouri State Fair.  Paula Deen is a victim of the Democratic Party’s pursuit of racial politics.

In each case, the operative phrase is, “It’s the culture, stupid!”

Byron York’s analysis of the Missouri clown incident is revealing.  He points out how President Bush was depicted as a chimpanzee and a clown.  Prize-winning books were written about President Bush being assassinated.  Bill Maher remains a staple on HBO, not despite his vitriol against the former president but because of it.

It doesn’t get any clearer than that: Anti-Republican culture dominates our United States of America.

Just ask a rodeo clown.

UPDATE 8/14/2013:
Michelle Malkin has 10 images that support Byron York's thesis, complete with the tag line, "Lighten up, buttercups."

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Republican Grand Gullibility

2011 picture of Trayvon Martin posted from The Daily Caller

 Earlier this week president Obama conducted a press conference on what he called “The Trayvon Martin Ruling.”  He spoke of how “There are very few African American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store.”  He emphasized that “…the violence that takes place in poor black neighborhoods around the country is born out of a very violent past in this country.”  He concluded by calling for all of us to do some “soul-searching.”  He suggested that we should “convene a conversation on race.”

I am one of those “old white guys” who was around in the 1960s.  I was raised in California, but ended up in Valdosta, Georgia.  I remember being cautioned to be careful in the “dark section of town.”  I remember being shocked to see the “Whites Only” signs.  I remember walking along the street and being conscious of people with dark skin tone looking at me as if I were going to harm them.  I wanted to exclaim, “Don’t judge me by the color of my skin!”

I am also a Vietnam veteran.  I remember wearing a uniform through airports and feeling the same sense of being an outsider.  My presence was inappropriate to many of the traveling public.

Our President’s sense of being treated with suspicion is familiar to me, as well as every other human being.  We all have experiences where we feel uncomfortable in public situations.  The feeling is so common that our entertainment industry frequently uses it as a theme.  Who hasn’t seen one of the “Shrek” films that romanticize the travails of a lovable ogre?

So what do we make of the President’s call for “a conversation on race.”  Republicans want to support the idea.  We all want to remove any stigma attached to those like the lovable Shrek.  It’s a sign of our Grand Gullibility.

In 1829, Mary Howitt published a poem titled “The Spider and the Fly.”  The first line of the poem is “'Will you walk into my parlour?' said the Spider to the Fly.”

Keep that in mind as you contemplate “a conversation on race.”  The Democratic Party teaches Americans that Republicans are racists.  The Party does it by inference, claiming that members of the Democratic Party are not racists, yet racism is a chronic problem in our American culture.  We are left to contemplate the question, “If Democrats are not racists, which political group could possibly be the problem?”

The Party also claims that its members are uniquely subjected to racism, as evidenced by the fact that nine out of ten American voters with dark skin tone tend to vote for the Democratic Party.  There is no other American identity group so strongly aligned with a political party.  The odds are thus about ten to one that individuals with dark skin tone are attracted to the Democratic Party, which puts them in direct conflict with Republicans.

Given that “a conversation on race” is intended to drive home the idea that Republicans are racists and want to harm people with dark skin tone, what possible good could come from this “conversation?”

Maybe it will expose The Reality.

“The Reality” is this: Racism in America is a political construct.  It is meant to strengthen the Democratic Party by teaching its members to hate the opposition party.  It is unseemly, but it works.

Here is a thought experiment to help better understand the issue:

If nine out of ten Americans with dark skin tone voted for Republicans, could the Democratic Party still teach that Republicans are racists?  Would people believe that Americans with dark skin tone are inherently racist?  (I imagine this would bring an end to the “raaaaacism” industry immediately!)

Also, what if I head on down to the office of the Clerk and Recorder and register as a Democrat?  Will I still be considered a racist?  (Since there is no racism within the Democratic Party, I will be immediately exonerated.  With the stroke of a pen, I am cured of my affliction!)

These examples might show how racism is used in America as a political weapon, but there is still a problem.  Republicans don’t seem to be capable of embracing the obvious.

We are skipping down the street to the melody of "La Vie en Rose."  Our Republican "Grand Gullibility” still defines us.

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The Week

 

The Week is a news magazine that highlights issues of the world in a concise and compelling fashion.  It is brought to us through the efforts of Felix Dennis (pictured on the right) and William Falk (on the left).

The individual in the middle is Charles Blow, a columnist for The New York Times.

One of the standard features of The Week is its “Best Column” format.  It devotes a page to “Best columns: The U.S.” and a page to “Best columns: Europe.”  It highlights two or three articles with the implicit guarantee that these are the important issues of the past week.

In its current issue (June 7, 2013), The Week features an article by Charles M. Blow of The New York Times.  The title of the excerpt is “The GOP’s ‘slavery’ insult.”

This is what The Week published:

Why do Republicans keep on “comparing blacks who support the Democratic candidates to slaves?” asked Charles M. Blow.  In the GOP’s “Democratic plantation” trope, blacks vote for Democrats only because Democrats take money from white people and give it to black people in the form of goodies like welfare and food stamps.  It’s “the highest level of insult,” implying that unlike other voters, African-Americans are too stupid and lazy to make informed decisions about politics.  To serve as safe mouthpieces for this slur, Republicans keep looking for black conservatives with a bomb-throwing rhetorical bent.  The most recent example is E.W. Jackson, an extremist nut whom the GOP nominated to run for lieutenant governor of Virginia.  Jackson has attacked gays as “very sick,” said liberalism has been “far more lethal to black lives” than the Ku Klux Klan, and dredged up the Democratic plantation analogy, saying, “We’re going to the slave market voluntarily today.”  When Republicans nominate black candidates of this type, who is their intended audience?  It’s certainly not the 95 percent of black voters they think of as shiftless slaves.

Mr. Blow teaches Americans that Republicans think of black voters as “shiftless slaves.”  The Week tells us this is what America needs to know.

Allen West could not be reached for comment.

UPDATE 7/4/2014:
Felix Dennis died on June 22, 2014 from throat cancer.  He was 67.

Photo of William Falk by Chester Higgins, Jr. of The New York Times.  Photo of Felix Dennis from his Web site.  Photo of Charles Blow by Damon Winter of The New York Times.

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The Elegance of Simplicity

The Power Line blog asks a rhetorical question, “Why aren’t more voters repelled by the constant parade of vulgarity, hate and violence that characterizes modern liberalism?”  They point to demonstrations at the funeral of Margaret Thatcher.

Power Line’s question is provocative, but it has an easy answer.

Here in America, liberalism is practiced by the Democratic Party, and it is easy to become a Democrat.  You don’t need to learn any difficult policy prescriptions or constitutional issues.  You simply have to believe in your feelings, and hold to one guiding sentiment:

I have high ideals and I dislike Republicans.

Consider the elegance of that conviction.  It is a kind of “homage to self esteem” for adults.  You know you are better than others because you are idealistic and keep a sharp focus on your central animus.

There is similar orthodoxy in other cultures.  In a totalitarian environment, your high ideals might be vested in a particular leadership figure and your hatred directed at another country.  Alternatively, your high ideals could be associated with religious fervor and your hatred directed at those who practice a separate religion.

These feelings are universal characteristics of the human condition.  They have been with us forever, and will always bring an attraction to those political/religious movements that adopt this simple structure.

UPDATE 5/17/2013:
Peggy Noonan and Kim Strassel have articles in today's Wall Street Journal that look at the impact of the idealism of the Democratic Party on our culture.  Americans are starting to pay attention.

UPDATE 5/24/2013:
Peggy Noonan and Kimberley Strassel press their insistence for an independent investigation of actions by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.

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Trompe-l'oeil

 

Photo by Sean Gallup / Getty Images

Foreign Policy has an article on a museum exhibit in Berlin, Germany.  The article is by Benjamin Weinthal and covers the story of the Jewish Museum Berlin and its exhibit “The Whole Truth…everything you always wanted to know about Jews.”

This is controversial.

Ilana glazer writes about it, as does Bill Glucroft.  What’s the controversy?  Our culture tells us we are beyond anti-Semitism, yet the reality might be different.

Here is another picture:

Sean Hannity featured a group of conservative men and women on his 4/9/2013 television show.  What was controversial about that show?

You be the judge.

These types of events are newsworthy because they deal with the unexpected.  The viewer in each instance is asked to make an assessment about what he or she is seeing.  Is it necessary?  What’s the reality?  Is there a sinister motive involved?

The unique quality of trompe-l’oeil is that what you see must be assessed.  It cannot be dismissed.

Let’s celebrate the courage of the Jewish Museum Berlin and the “Hannity” show.  Our culture teaches us that the world is settled; that when we see anti-Semitism in the Middle East and elsewhere, we must accept it.

Isn’t it refreshing to see people advocate that we don’t have to accept it?

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The Face of Voter Suppression

Melowese Richardson, “The Face of Voter Suppression in America”

Melowese Richardson is an election judge in Hamilton County, Ohio with 25 years of experience.  She has just been indicted by an Ohio grand jury for voter fraud.

What’s important to understand is that while Ms. Richardson has been accused of voting multiple times for President Obama, she does not believe this is fraudulent activity.  As an election judge, and a protector of our democratic freedoms, she believes the principle of “one person, one vote” does not apply to her.

Where would she get that idea?

She seems to have been taught that her actions are necessary in the fight against Republicans who want to hurt Americans.  She is simply doing what is right and natural.

And where might she get that point of view?

Here is a video of yesterday’s Easter Sunday sermon presented by Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC.  Ms. Harris-Perry teaches us that Republicans actively engage in voter suppression, and that photo identification of voters is a sinister activity.

Here are her remarks:

It may not be an election year, but that does not mean we can rest in our constant vigilance to protect the fragile and increasingly endangered health of our democracy.  Yes, folks, “This Week in Voter Suppression” is back, with a vengeance.  The Nation magazine’s Ari Berman reports that in the first quarter of 2013, states around the country have proposed 55 new voting restrictions.  The suppression-proposing states include Arkansas, Connecticut, Iowa, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming.

But the worst offender this week was Virginia, where Governor Bob “Trans-Vaginal” McDonnell signed a new suppression law that will likely cost the state more than $7 million and disenfranchise more than 850,000 eligible, legal voters.  His tool of choice, like that of most of the states, is the entirely unnecessary government-issued photo ID and because you followed our “This Week in Voter Suppression” series here on MHP in 2012, you already know that these laws are a solution to a problem that does not exist.

You also know these restrictions have a clear, disparate impact on the poor, the physically disabled, the elderly, college students, and black and Latino voters.  These laws do not protect the integrity of democracy.  They undermine it.  These laws undermine the basic precept of a healthy democracy: That to live in a democracy is to have the right to govern, not just to be governed; to rule, not just to be ruled; to be heard, not silenced - and here is the big one - to live without fear that winners take all.

You see, democracy is unique, powerful and enduring, not because it serves the interest of winners.  I mean, totalitarian regimes do that.  Democracy’s special claim on world history is that it protects the rights and interests of the losers as well.  Winning an election is not the same thing as staging a coup.  Democracy is for losers because it ensures that winners don’t take all.  They can only take their share.  But it also ensures that the less powerful have a stake, a voice and an equal capacity for self-governance.

We the people means all of us, which is why, on Thursday, President Obama signed an executive order creating a special commission designed to protect our ability to cast a vote and have a voice.  It’s just in time, because the threats to our votes are very real.

Do you sense the characterizations?  Republicans are anti-democracy and want to hurt the disadvantaged.  Their “tool of choice”: Voter Suppression.

Melowese Richardson believes it is legitimate to vote six times in order to achieve the necessary fairness for democracy in America.

Melissa Harris-Perry is sympathetic.

 

UPDATE 5/23/2013:

John Fund highlights another instance of voter suppression, this time on a much larger scale:

Lois Lerner, IRS Director of Exempt Organizations

 

UPDATE 8/14/2013:

Melowese Richardson has been convicted of voter fraud and sentenced to five years in prison.  In addition, 94 election workers at 16 precincts (all but one of these precincts supervised by Democratic Party election judges) have been excluded from working future elections.

UPDATE 8/28/2013:
In Minnesota, two women are charged with double-voting.  Although a federal crime, this is typically not prosecuted by the DOJ.  (Melowese Richardson was convicted of a state crime, not a federal crime.)  For our current federal government, this is not a problem, at least if you vote the "right way." 

That appears to be the defense of Farhiya Dool and Amina Hassan in Minnesota.  Their friends say they simply made an honest mistake.  Their attorney says she finds it "offensive" that these women have been criminally charged.

When the Constitution and the rule of law are considered "offensive" in America, what could possibly go wrong?

UPDATE 3/24/2014:
J. Christian Adams points out that Eric Holder will not bring charges against Melowese Richardson, even though federal law makes it a felony to vote more than once for President.  Mr. Adams characterizes our United States Department of Justice as "facilitating a culture of brazen criminality."

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