Hourly now, I have negative TV ads claiming that this candidate or that candidate voted tax breaks for big oil, or supported the "special interests" or some other just plain awful vote.
Never do these ads mention the name or number of this dreadful bill the target is accused to voting for, or the date of the vote, or anything that would allow you to fact check the claim.
And in this age of Democratic footdragging in Congress, that puts off voting funding bills until the last minute and then voting thru a 5000 page "omnibus spending bill" to keep the government running for another three weeks, it's meaningless. The Congressperson can vote for the omnibus and keep the government funded, and lay himself open to all kinds of charges, because an omnibus bill contains all kinds of bad stuff. In 5000 pages they can and do hide funding for damn near anything. Or he/she can vote against it, and get trashed from all quarters for shutting down the government. All the feeders at the federal trough will rise up in righteous anger against anyone who threatens to derail their gravy train.
So I ignore all the "Did you know so-and-so made some dreadful vote" ads.
1 comment:
On the occasions they do list the "awful piece of legislation" this or that candidate voted for or the "good piece of legislation" this or that candidate voted against, I have found that there was usually a good reason the candidate voted one way or the other. Sometimes an otherwise good bill ends up with riders that are gawd awful that would cause more harm than good. Sometimes a 'bad' bill isn't but it appears that way to someone from the opposing side because it took away some of their power or reduced the amount of money one of their cronies would have gotten, hence it being a 'bad' bill.
It's like the claim about one particular US Senate candidate, an incumbent, who has been slammed for 'missing' a number of senate intelligence committee meetings. The ad even lists some of those meeting dates. But if one looks at that particular candidates calendar, you'll see that the candidate was in another committee meeting and couldn't be two places at the same time. In fact just about every senator is put into that position, so the claim is specious at best, and totally distorted at worst. But that's political campaigning for you - it's ALL bad.
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