'Tis the Season for Swiftboating
With less than 3 weeks to election day, and with political prognosticators predicting bad tidings for House and Senate Republicans, Republican candidates are calling more and more upon their front groups to do some swiftboating of their opponents. During this campaign season, you, as a voter, need to be careful not to succumb to the propaganda of swiftboaters.
A guy named Bob Perry ran Swift Boat Vets for Freedom, which smeared John Kerry as a phony Vietnam War hero, thereby managing to throw the presidency to Bush. Now Perry is back with a new front group called Economic Freedom Fund (EFF). This group is behind many other front groups that are busy smearing Democratic candidates.
EFF also does push polling. Someone calls and informs you that he is doing a survey. Then he proceeds to ask questions that impugn the character or is otherwise derogatory of a Democrat in a race. It's called a poll, but it is nothing but a negative ad. Push polling is illegal in many states.
EFF seems to be behind a lot of the swiftboating. But some Republican senatorial candidates have covertly organized front groups to benefit only their campaigns. Loud-mouthed Rick Santorum has a group called Softer Voices that works entirely for him.
Another Republican front group is Progress for America - Their specialty is TV ads telling American to be afraid of their security if Democrats win.
Here are 2 examples of outrageous front groups doing outrageous swiftboating:
- AMERICAS PAC - They did a video ad in which a female announcer says:
"Black babies are terminated at triple the rate of white babies. The Democratic Party supports these abortion laws that are decimating our people, but the individual's right to life is protected in the Republican platform. Democrats say they want our vote. Why don't they want our lives?
- BLACK REPUBLICAN FREEDOM FUND - They are running ads that, believe it or not, say:
Martin Luther King, Jr. Was a Republican.
To find out more about swiftboating, jump to The Pariot Project.
Don't depend on TV ads. Assume they are all fiction. Get the facts about the candidates from a neutral, objective and reliable source. Get it from the League of Women Voters.
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