Dear Gov. Dean -- It’s Not “Obstructionist” to Defend the Constitution

[understandinglife]

28 January 2006 (# 54)

Various folk have commented today that Senate Democrats are concerned with being tagged, as was Senator Daschle, as being “obstructionist.” Firstly, let’s address whose doing the tagging and that we know how to deal with them.

Arianna Huffington, during the past few days, has given everyone a course in how to deal with the George and Karl propaganda machine – otherwise known as corporate American broadcast TV and newspapers like the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. In this case it’s talking head Russert and his boss and broadcast platform, NBC:

Somebody's feeling the heat... How else to explain the widely-off-the-mark responses from NBC's PR department in Lloyd Grove's column to our reporting on Russert's multitude of journalistic ethical conflicts.

Instead of dealing with the charges head on, the media giant and its Washington bureau chief Tim Russert have astonishingly decided to get down and dirty, dredging up and faxing to at least one reporter a 12-year-old false claim that I hired a private detective to snoop on Russert's wife Maureen Orth while she was preparing a hit piece on me for Vanity Fair in 1994.

I've denied this ludicrous charge, put forward without a shred of evidence many times before -- including directly to Russert during the '96 GOP convention in San Diego. But that's not the point. The point is that instead of addressing the issue of his failure to come clean with his audience on a host of ethical questions, Russert has turned the NBC publicity machine into a vehicle for sleaze and rumor-mongering.

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NBC News' diversionary strategy might have worked in the days before blogs started holding the MSM's feet to the fire. But not anymore. One thing is for sure: the Huffington Post and many others in the blogosphere will keep asking the questions Tim Russert doesn't want to answer.

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/nbc-news-pr-department-ge_b_14540.html

In other words, go right back at them with the truth and pile on the facts. You, Gov. Dean, have been doing that with precision and alacrity, most recently by not allowing anyone to escape the obvious facts that Abramoff was a Republican money machine, exclusively, and that he not only bilked his Native American clients, lavished Bush and all his neoconster brethren, he intentionally shunted their support away from Democratic Party candidates. As the Dwight L. Morris and Associates report of 25 January, 2006, notes:

... in total, the donations of Abramoff's tribal clients to Democrats dropped by nine percent after they hired him, while their donations to Republicans more than doubled, increasing by 135 percent after they signed him up;

… five out of seven of Abramoff's tribal clients vastly favored Republican candidates over Democratic ones;

… four of the seven began giving substantially more to Republicans than Democrats after he took them on;
… Abramoff's clients gave well over twice as much to Republicans than Democrats, while tribes not affiliated with Abramoff gave well over twice as much to Democrats than the GOP -- exactly the reverse pattern.

"It's very hard to see the donations of Abramoff's clients as a bipartisan greasing of the wheels," Morris, the firm's founder and a former investigations editor at the Los Angeles Times, told The Prospect.

Link: http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10924

So, how to be even more effective in destroying the George and Karl propaganda machine? I think the following suggestion from Steve Sotto at The Left Coaster is wise and cogently stated:

The pressure needs to be kept on the mediaa, and the suggestions I made earlier this week (http://tinyurl.com/a6hyp) about a Democratic War Room to deal with media accountability and accuracy are even more relevant as the week progressed and we saw more pathetic examples of NBC and others parroting the RNC and White House talking points on a variety of subjects.

But I also suggested in that post that the party emulate what Grover Norquist did years ago by bringing together various entities every week to determine the common talking points and issues of relevance to the broadest possible base in the party, and then focus the message all along those discussion points for the rest of the week and especially for the weekend chat fests. As I said, there is no reason the Democrats cannot do this now as well, and it would be in this environment that Beltway wise men like Elmendorf, Steve Clemons, and others who have been around (and are all working toward the same things the center-left blogosphere want), can work with the DNC, DSCC, DCCC, Reid and Pelosi's offices, the Center for American Progress, and center-left bloggers on developing the common message for a disciplined attack that can keep both the media and the White House in defense mode the whole week.

Again, we all want accountability and accuracy from the media, and we all want to push the RNC and the White House back on its heels like they were during our Social Security pushback last year. It should be noted that the Truth Squad approach came from the center-left blogosphere. It can be done again, and done as part of a permanent pushback during all of 2006, but the first step is to get the Beltway types and the bloggers in the same room and get over the internal mud wrestling that I have been guilty of from time to time myself.

It is far better to force the beginnings of this internal communication and exchange of ideas now, rather than have the center-left blogosphere spend another election cycle angry and befuddled at what the Beltway Democrats have cooked up in a vacuum as our election strategy. The Beltway types need to clue the blogs in on their thinking, and have that thinking stand up to the scrutiny of those who are well-informed, outside the Beltway, and hear from people every day.

Let’s get on with it.

Link: http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/006688.php

“Get on with it,” in_deed.

And, the reason to act immediately is the threat to our Constitution posed by Mr. Alito ever being appointed to the Supreme Court. The courage of Democratic Senators in the past three days and the rapid and broad response of the people are all the more reason, Gov. Dean, to have the DNC host exactly the type of gathering Steve Soto recommends. If folk can’t get into a room together in the next 24 hours, or less, they could all be gathered via web and conference phones and use the “Stop Alito” as essentially the training session for what will need to become a persistent, day-to-day endeavor.

In the case of Alito, the media strategy should label Bush “obstructionist” for allowing the far-right Republican zealots to dictate his nomination to the Supreme Court. Bush’s nomination of Alito is a crystal clear indication that he, George Walker Bush, intends to obstruct the rights of each woman to control decisions about the reproductive functions of their body. On that alone, Alito must be stopped. But, we also have plenty of other grounds for extending the debate, which the filibuster would do.

I am most grateful for your words, yesterday in RI, expressing your support for Senator Kerry and Senator Kennedy, and, I understand the DNC cannot “call for a filibuster.” But, the DNC can organize a comprehensive attack on Bush and Karl’s propaganda machine, and the most pressing issue at the moment is to rally the entire Nation to realize that Mr. Bush is the gravest threat to our Constitution and our rule of law as we have ever seen, and he intends to use Mr. Alito to obstruct our rights, starting with a woman’s right to make decisions about reproduction.

Thank you for your continued leadership,

Peace.