MoveOn MUST respond to this WP remark.

[madfloridian]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5813-2003Oct9.html

About half way down the column:

Flood of Calls Flows Backward

MoveOn.org, a liberal fundraising and lobbying group, found new targets this week: House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). The Internet-based group is instructing members to flood the lawmakers' offices with phone calls urging them to allow a House vote on a bill to overturn the Federal Communications Commission's decision.....(edited for copyright)

DeLay's aides retaliated, showing they can give as good as they get. While they.......registered the callers, they then forwarded the calls to the cell phone of MoveOn.org's campaign director, Eli Pariser.

Pariser said he complained to DeLay's aides, but they ...... thought he wasn't too inconvenienced. Stuart Roy, DeLay's spokesman.......(edited for copyright), "It was a fairly pathetic effort on their part in terms of volume."END SNIP

If it was a pathetic effort, then shame on us. I know there was little response here to a couple of posts. If it was NOT a pathetic response.....then MoveOn needs to answer. I frankly think this is spin....it sure sounds like it to me.

I will not post on their forum, as name, job, and city is required. I can not do that. I do the activism, but I can never contact them.

[lolly]

1. Contradicts itself

Was it "a flood of calls" or "a fairly pathetic effort" ?

[sendero]

2. I wish....

... MoveOn would target Delay's district and get him defeated. Time for the karma train to reach his station too.

[madfloridian]

3. Amen!

I have a son in TX who is all for everything Republican, but he detests DeLay. How does he keep on getting away with it?

I called right after the email came from MoveOn, one of the first. The office just starting to realize what was on going on, I think.

[CBHagman]

4. Complain to Hastert and the Ethics Committee

DeLay gets away with this because he's managed to fight off ethics investigations by threatening counter-investigations of Democrats. Well, we are paying the salaries of his staff, so if they're indulging in sophomoric stunts on the taxpayers' dime, they should be reprimanded, at the very least.

Complain to the local papers, the GOP leadership, the Democratic leadership, the entire Ethics Committee. This is the kind of thing that needs to be revealed to the public at large.

[Freddie Stubbs]

5. This is really a poor strategy

What is accomplished by tying up the congressional phone lines. Tom Delay doens't care what you think, unless you happen to live in his district. Call your own Congressman instead. They may actually care what your opinion is, since you live in their district and hold the power to voted against them and pruseuade others to do so.

[madfloridian]

6. But.....they can not force Delay to have the vote.

We can't force him, so Democracy loses, and DeLay wins.

Most of us did call our congressmen as well. MoveOn listed the numbers in the email for easy access.

I did tell my Republican congressman that I could not vote DeLay out, but I could vote against him, my own congressman. I told DeLay's office the same thing.

Ok, what strategy would you recommend if not calling? Many ignore their emails, they refuse to open snail mail because of anthrax scares, so do you have other ideas?

[juajen]

7. Generally, that is what MoveOn does. They were contacted

, he and Hastert, because of their leadership roles in the House. I agree, MoveOn should start some kind of campaign against Delay. I would bet money that Hastert did not do this. Delay is a SOB of the first order.