Thursday, January 05, 2006

The Tactical Benefits of Crazily Lying

One of the key tactical realities the GOP has figured out about the modern media landscape is that no matter what, mainstream reporters and pundits will never say "the GOP is just crazily lying."

The upshot of this is that when the GOP tells some crazy lie, reporters generally will give you a "Claim A isn't true, but it's an exaggeration of Fact B which is true."

Problem is, often Fact B is made up. And Democratic talking heads tend to either be so inept (the Alan Colmes model) or so not-really-Democrats (the Biden model) that they never bother to point out that no, in fact there is nothing remotely close to what the GOP is saying that can reasonably be called the truth.

That's happening now with the Abramoff matter. Republicans are all over TV saying "this involves both parties equally." Which is insane, just a crazy lie, and everyone pretty much knows this. So reporters will help us out, saying "well, though Abramoff did give money to both parties, this is primarily trouble for the Republicans."

For the record, here's a list of everybody Abramoff gave hard money to in 2002 and 2004:

Jack Kingston, Republican (GOP US House, Georgia's 1st)
ARMPAC, Tom Delay (GOP US House, Texas' 22nd)
John Ensign (GOP US Senate, Nevada's Junior)
Friends of Big Sky (GOP Montana PAC)
John Doolittle (GOP US House, California's 4th)
Connie Morella (GOP US House, Maryland, defeated)
Saxby Chambliss (GOP US Senate, Georgia's Senior)
Frank A. LoBiondo (GOP US House, New Jersey's 2nd)
Chip Pickering (GOP US House, Mississippi's 3rd)
Tim Hutchinson (GOP Arkansas House, 95th district)
Chris Cannon (GOP US House, Florida's 3rd)
Johnny Isakson (GOP US Senate, Georgia's Junior)
Hawkeye PAC (GOP Senate PAC, National)
Eric Cantor (GOP US House, Virginia's 7th - my district)
Rich PAC (GOP US House PAC, National)
First Freedoms Fund (GOP PAC)
Rely On Your Beliefs Fund (GOP PAC, run by Roy Blount)
New Jersey Republican Committee
South Dakota GOP Leadership PAC
Keep Our Majority PAC (GOP PAC run by Bob Ney)
Ernest Istook (GOP US House, Oklahoma's 5th)
Ted Stevens (GOP US Senate, Arkansas' Senior)
Mike Ferguson (GOP US House, New Jersey's 7th)
Ric Keller (GOP US House, Florida's 8th)
Chuck Grassley (GOP US Senate, Iowa's Senior)
Denny Rehberg (GOP US House, Montana's At-Large)
Charles Taylor (GOP US House, North Carolina's 11th)
Kit Bond (GOP US Senate, Missouri's Senior)
Dave Camp (GOP US House, Michigan's 4th)
Jim Talent (GOP US Senate, Missouri's Junior)
Phil Gingrey (GOP US House, Georgia's 11th)
Richard Shelby (GOP US Senate, Alabama's Senior)
Tom Young (failed GOP candidate)
Curt Weldon (GOP US House, Pennsylvania's 7th)
Kimo Kaloi (failed GOP candidate)
Randy Forbes (GOP US House, Virginia's 4th)
Mike Simpson (GOP US House, Idaho's 2nd)
Gordon Smith (GOP US Senate, Oregon's Junior)
Rob Simmons (GOP US House, Connecticut's 2nd)
Heather Wilson (GOP US House, New Mexico's 1st)
Jim Bunning (GOP US Senate, Kentucky's Junior)
Bob Smith (GOP US Senate, NH - defeated)
Dana Rohrbacher (GOP US House, California's 46th)
Susanne Terrell (failed GOP candidate)
Jim Inhofe (GOP US Senate, Oklahoma's Senior)
Thad Cochran (GOP US Senate, Mississippi's Senior)
Arlen Specter (GOP US Senate, Pennsylvania's Senior)
George Nethercutt (failed GOP candidate)
George W. Bush (GOP US President)
Senate Victory Fund (GOP Senate PAC)
Richard Pombo (GOP US House, California's 11th)
Jim Saxton (GOP US House, New Jersey's 3rd)
Bill Janklow (failed GOP candidate)
Carolyn Grant (failed GOP candidate)
Battle Born Classic Committee (GOP US House PAC)
American Liberty PAC (GOP US House PAC)
Butch Otter (GOP US House, Iowa's 1st)
Ralph Regula (GOP US House, Ohio's 16th)
Mark Foley (GOP US House, Florida's 16th)
Jim Hansen (failed GOP candidate)
Newstar PAC (GOP Delay-linked PAC)
Marilyn Musgrave (GOP US House, Colorado's 4th)
Dan Burton (GOP US House, Indiana's 5th)

That's 63 candidates he gave money to, all Republicans. It took me a little while to track down all this info, but a professional journalist should be able to handle it, don't you think?

-- On edit --
OK, obviously all 63 are not candidates. But the point stands.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

The currently most abused phrase is "Abramoff related contributions". You'll read some piece claiming that democrats received Abramoff related contributions. Apparently that means primarily from Indian tribes. The problem is that many of the people receiving so called "related" contributions have tribes in their states and have been receiving contributions from them well before Jack came on the scene. As one report suggested, if there is a more accurate situation, it is that the tribes were donating to these democrats all along and Jack managed to siphon contributions AWAY from the dems. So, yeah, they are "related". They are related because they are SMALLER because of Jack. Really damning no?

Anonymous said...

I thought he gave money to Harry Reid and a few Dems too, even though it was mostly the GOP...

Paul Dirks said...

The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records told the same tale -- then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'.

Anonymous said...

Some of the confusion is over Senate contributions vs Congressional contributions.

Mix in the Direct donations vs 'related to A-hoff' donations... and you get all kinds of things being said.

Anonymous said...

Can you please post the sources you got the names from? So that I can use in discussion.

Thanks. ^.^

Anonymous said...

Can you please post the sources you got the names from? So that I can use in discussion.

Thanks. ^.^

Anonymous said...

Can you please post the sources you got the names from? So that I can use in discussion.

Thanks. ^.^

Unknown said...

You can get the info from a lot of places, but I got mine from fecinfo (to find where the contributions went) combined with project votesmart (to ID the recipient.)

Anonymous said...

Well done. I myself fell victim to the Abramoff related contribution meme on Harry Reid. Oy

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