MoveOn.org: Momentum or Menace?
Chris Cillizza
Washington Post
The biggest news yesterday came before General David Petraeus or Ambassador Ryan Crocker uttered a single word in the hearings on progress in Iraq.And it came in the form of a newspaper ad, paid for by MoveOn.org.
The ad, which accused Petraeus of "cooking the books for the White House", was roundly condemned by Republicans who time and again in the hearings held up the ad in the New York Times and called on Democrats to condemn it. The statement from RNC spokesman Mike Duncan was typical of the rhetoric: "Will Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the rest of the Democrats make it clear that they support our men and women in uniform by denouncing the MoveOn ad, or will they once again bow to the radical liberals who now seem to be controlling the Democrat Party?"
"Simply put the MoveOn people are a gift to the GOP," said Republican direct-mail consultant Dan Hazelwood. "MoveOn are heirs to the same people who called the 19-year old soldiers drafted into Vietnam 'baby killers'."
Democrats pushed back that Republicans were trying to drum up a controversy by focusing on MoveOn rather than the substance of Petraeus' testimony. But, privately, the controversy over the ad highlighted the real disconnect between how the party's base views the war and how the party establishment sees it.
(Continued here.)
Washington Post
The biggest news yesterday came before General David Petraeus or Ambassador Ryan Crocker uttered a single word in the hearings on progress in Iraq.And it came in the form of a newspaper ad, paid for by MoveOn.org.
The ad, which accused Petraeus of "cooking the books for the White House", was roundly condemned by Republicans who time and again in the hearings held up the ad in the New York Times and called on Democrats to condemn it. The statement from RNC spokesman Mike Duncan was typical of the rhetoric: "Will Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the rest of the Democrats make it clear that they support our men and women in uniform by denouncing the MoveOn ad, or will they once again bow to the radical liberals who now seem to be controlling the Democrat Party?"
"Simply put the MoveOn people are a gift to the GOP," said Republican direct-mail consultant Dan Hazelwood. "MoveOn are heirs to the same people who called the 19-year old soldiers drafted into Vietnam 'baby killers'."
Democrats pushed back that Republicans were trying to drum up a controversy by focusing on MoveOn rather than the substance of Petraeus' testimony. But, privately, the controversy over the ad highlighted the real disconnect between how the party's base views the war and how the party establishment sees it.
(Continued here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home