Andrée Seu Peterson on the "Time" cover 
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Independent campaign messages
In Ohio and New Mexico today, BornAliveTruth.org will begin airing a television ad that questions Barack Obama’s efforts while in the Illinois Senate to defeat the Born Alive Infants Protection Act (see below). Organizations like this, which includes MoveOn.org on the left, operate as independent entities for the presidential candidates and their parties. As The Associated Press reports: “By law, they cannot coordinate their efforts with the campaigns, but they take their cues from news events and from the ad strategies and messages that the campaigns themselves undertake.”
Anthony Corrado, a political scientist and an expert on political spending techniques at Colby College in Maine, points out, “We’ll see more of that type of activity because it is turning into a very close race where there a number of states that will be decided by a very close margin.”
MoveOn.org’s first ad targeted at John McCain attempts to draw attention to the GOP nominee’s advisers who have worked as lobbyists (also below).
BornAliveTruth.org ad
MoveOn.org ad
back to top19 Comments to “Independent campaign messages”
10 posts or less ’till someone compares these to the Swift Boat ads (disparagingly, of course)…
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(by these I meant the BornAliveTruth.org ads)
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JBH: Well, what’s the difference? Or do you think the term “swift-boating” is complimentary?
I am steadfastly opposed to outside groups issuing and paying for ads aligned with campaigns.
Once upon a time, your candidate was, too. Remember McCain-Feingold?
But I can’t wait to hear him condemn ads aligned with his campaign.
I suppose constancy isn’t a virtue either?
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Arcadia,
Doesn’t the Koran teach it is OK to lie to further Islam?
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Slow boat to heck.
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These sorts of exposes of Obama’s bizarre record of rabidly supporting, enabling and celebrating the most heinous form of child murder ever devised in the entire sorry history of evil need to be blanketed across this country in every form imaginable.
Such that when some ingrate pulls the lever or punches the card for Obama in November, they should be well aware that they are, with the same motion, effectively wielding the steel knife that plunges into the brain of a full-term healthy wide-eyed child.
The sickness that grips this country is truly beyond description.
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Once upon a time, your candidate was, too. Remember McCain-Feingold?
These groups are a direct result of McCain-Feingold, so it doesn’t follow that McCain was ever opposed to them.
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“I am steadfastly opposed to outside groups issuing and paying for ads aligned with campaigns”
What groups are considered outside in your formulation? We live in a nation where the right to assemble and seek redress for grievances, and the right to speech are valued. Sorry you don’t appreciate our Constitution and the rights it recognizes and protects.
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It’s scary that Arcadia is opposed to the right of free speech by private individuals. But not surprising.
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The question with these legal ads has to do with their truthfulness.
Obama did in Ilinois work and vote against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act Can anyone cite proof otherwise?
On the Move On,org ad, it doesn’t follow that former lobbyists working on McCain’s campaign will try to influence him on behalf of former clients, nor that if they did so McCain would heed them. McCain does require lobbyists on his campaign to sever their ties with lobbying outfit,
Most high level politicos hire lobbyists, as they are often bright, well informed people. Acording The Hill.com Obama himself has lobbyists on his staff, as indicated by the following:
Three political aides on Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) payroll were registered lobbyists for dozens of corporations, including Wal-Mart, British Petroleum and Lockheed Martin, while they received payments from his campaign, according to public documents.
The presence of political operatives with long client lists on Obama’s campaign contrasts with his long-held stand of campaigning against the influence of special interests….
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I join Outkast’s post at #9. Free speech is grand!
The BornAliveTruth.org ad is powerful. I’d donate to get that one shown over and over again.
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Peter:
I’m glad to see an analysis of the ads’ content. And I was pleasantly surprised with these ads. As PACs go, these were pretty mild and stuck to relevant issues.
ANTI-OBAMA AD
It is a matter of public record that Obama voted against the Illinois BAIP act. But it does not follow that he supports the killing of failed-abortion babies. In fact, he has said that (1) such babies were already protected by Illinois state law, and (2) he voted against the BAIP because of other restrictions it put on abortions that he thought were an encroachment on a woman’s “right” to abortion. Factcheck.org supports him on assertion #1 (“Illinois law already provided that physicians must protect the life of a fetus when there is ‘a reasonable likelihood of sustained survival of the fetus outside the womb, with or without artificial support.’”), but implies either that assertion #2 is shaky or that Obama changed his position upon entering the general election (“Obama voted in committee against the 2003 state bill that was nearly identical to the federal act he says he would have supported. Both contained identical clauses saying that nothing in the bills could be construed to affect legal rights of an unborn fetus”)
ANTI-MCCAIN AD
It is also a matter of public record that John McCain has many (former) lobbyists in his campaign, and that he receives three times more money from oil and gas companies than Obama does.
Strictly speaking, you are right that it does not follow with deductive certainty that those lobbyists and that money will influence McCain. Neither does it follow with deductively certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow because it’s risen every day of my life so far. But, inductively speaking, both are pretty safe bets. People tend not to donate to campaigns they think will hurt their interests. And an unusual number of lobbyists among your campaign staff is a pretty good indication that lobbyists will also have a place in your administration.
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I really don’t care about people voicing their opinion. I will never support silencing political talk. Both Obama and McCain were lobbyists before they ran for office. I rather like that there a people independent of the process digging for background on the people who want me to trust them with the country. I think the born alive add is far more effective because it deals with a segment of society whose human rights are systematically ignored by those in power allowing for wholesale oppression and persecution in the USA.
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jjf, a nurse, Jill Stanek, testified to Obama’s committee that infants born alive accidentally in the process of abortion were routinely put aside and allowed. to die. The law did not protect them.
The folowing is Ms. Stanek’s description of the end of the procedure:
Up until recently, staff options were to hold the baby until death,or put the baby in our soiled utility if we got too busy or if the babylingered too long. Indeed, it is not uncommon for one of these ba-bies to live for an hour or two or even longer. Last year, of the 16babies that Christ Hospital states were aborted, at least five wereborn alive. Four of those babies, two boys and two girls, lived be-tween one and a half and 3 hours. At Christ Hospital, one abortedbaby lived once for almost an entire 8-hour shift. At least two ofthe second-trimester babies who were aborted last year at ChristHospital were healthy babies.One night, a nursing co-worker was taking an aborted Down’sSyndrome baby who was born alive to our soiled utility room be-cause his parents did not want to hold him and she did not havethe time to hold him. I could not bear the thought of this sufferingchild dying alone in the soiled utility room, so I cradled and rockedhim for the 45 minutes that he lived. He was between 21 and 22weeks old, weighed about a half a pound, and was about ten incheslong. He was too weak to move very much, expending any energyhe had trying to breathe.Toward the end, he was so quiet, I couldn’t tell if he was stillalive unless I held him up against the light to see if I could seehis heart beating through his chest wall.After he was pronounced dead, we folded his little arms acrosshis chest, wrapped him in a tiny shroud, and carried him to thehospital morgue where we take all of our other dead patients.Other co-workers have told me about incidences of live abortedbabies whom they have cared for. A support associate told meabout an aborted baby who was left to die on the counter of thesoiled utility room wrapped in a disposable blanket—I’m sorry—towel. This baby was accidentally thrown into the garbage, andwhen they later were going through the trash to try and find thebaby, the baby fell out of the towel and onto the floor.A nurse co-worker told me about an abortion she was involvedin where the baby was supposed to have spina bifida but was bornwith an intact spine. Since I spoke before you last year, this nursethat was involved in this particular abortion told me that what ac-tually happened was that there was an incompletely formed twinwho appeared as a mass on his brother’s back during ultrasound.The nurse told me that the father came into the soiled utility roomto see his son, took one look and saw that he had been involved.
Whatever Illinois laws were on the books, they did not protect these infants born alive. That’s what the bill that Obama fought against was designed to do.
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And our resident abortion supporters are outraged that Palin supposedly wanted to make rape victims pay for their exam kits. Outraged, I tell ya!
That Obama doesn’t care about infants who survive abortion attempt gets a “hmmm, no big deal…” from them is the thing that is outrageous.
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“Independent campaign groups” are the pornography of our political process. Yeah, it might be legal, but do we really want to run our politics on the lowest common denominator?
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do we really want to run our politics on the lowest common denominator?
Yes, Anlir dear, patriotic Americans believe that even the “least among us” (and that would include homosexual leftists) have a right to vote and otherwise take part of the political process in our nation.
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To oppose these ads is to oppose freedom, as others have said.
If the laws in Illinois protected the babies, then why were they being left to die? Why did a nurse convince somebody in the Illinois legislature that a tougher law was needed?
The loophole in the earlier law is obvious: “. . .reasonable likelihood of sustained survival of the fetus outside the womb, with or without artificial support. . . .” Any doctor could allow a baby to die under such a law.
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One thing is for certain, CCR’s have become addicted to the “pornography” of politics. We see their addiction on full display every day on here.
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