We at BSP still don't think the Senate and Congress should act as the ad police, and wish that Democratic leadership had not allowed the resolutions condemning the MoveOn Petraeus ad to come up. We're also not a fan of the ad's headline, either.
That being said, there's a new wrinkle in today's feed on Walz's response to the ad.
In Outside Agitators Or Prime Movers?, MSNBC's Tom Curry quotes Tim Walz as saying that he was on Fox News on September 10 disagreeing with the tactics in the MoveOn.org ad and the ad's treatment of General Petraeus.
This jibes with something we had read early in the controversy on a conservative site about Walz disagreeing with the ad on a radio show; a tipster answered our earlier query with the information that the radio show was on a "Fox Across the Nation" broadcast. However, we haven't been able to confirm that this was the case, since our source didn't have an audio file. Perhaps Walz is talking about Fox News on cable. We are hoping for audio or video and a transcript to clarify this murkiness.
Here's the Walz part of the MSNBC story:
"Moveon is both part of the key to the Democratic majority and the seeds of their own demise because the majority makers who won in conservative-leaning (House) districts have nothing in common with Moveon," said third-ranking House Republican leader Rep. Adam Putnam of Florida.A 'canyon of difference'
"So there is this canyon of difference between the hard left base that's represented by Moveon and the right-of-center Democrats who won in seats that were previously unwinnable that made the difference in them taking the Congress," Putnam said.But that's exactly why for some congressional Democrats, the "Betray Us" storm clouds had a silver lining: it was a chance to let it be known how they far they are from Moveon.org.
Said freshman Democrat Rep. Tim Walz, who was elected last year in a Republican-leaning district in Minnesota, "Before anybody in the country spoke on this, I spoke on Fox News on Monday morning Sept. 10 and said I disagreed with the tactics, I disagreed with the way they treated Gen. Petraeus."
Walz got a relatively tiny $665* in aid from Moveon.org.
As for next year's campaigns, "I think they're probably going to have less of a role," he said.
"In my case, I'm pinched from both sides," Walz noted. "They ran the Petraeus ad that I disagree with, and they're asking if they should support primary candidates against those who voted for the war funding" as Walz did in May and again on Wednesday.
Does Moveon.org have a candidate against Walz?
"That's just talk from what Moveon says; there's no talk in the district," he said.
A couple of things about this. It does seem like Walz is throwing down the gauntlet at MoveOn's feet, and that those activists in the district upset by the war funding, FISA and the ad resolution votes
How that primary challenge fares will prove a concrete measure of discontent with Walz from the left--and we predict that the discontent, however large or small, will be vocal and passionate. MoveOn.org will indeed play the role of a progressive version of the Club for Growth, should the progressive organization aid a district candidate willing to take on Walz. Update: given the emails we're getting, we believe we've probably overstated the possibily of a DFL primary challenge to Walz [end update].
The consequences to the First district GOP, however, are much more devastating.
For while Walz's vote on Wednesday might have seemed a surrender to demands-by-press-release issued by MNGOP chair Ron Carey (Sept. 10) and challenger wannabes Brian Davis and Randy Demmer (Sept 20/21) before the MSNBC story broke, the fact that Walz expressed his disagreement on Fox prior to the faux demands shows that they simply weren't paying attention.
Rather, they simply revealed themselves as mere cogs in the apparatus for manufacturing outrage. They couldn't be bothered with due diligence.
Moreover, the NRCC has tried to define Walz as a puppet of the left. Good luck pushing that meme while MoveOn's ads run back-to-back to the NRCC's own.
What's likely to be lost in the sound and fury from both the right and left will be that Walz didn't like the ad, but that reaction didn't stop him from looking critically at General Petraeus's claims. He ended up being unswayed following a critical examination of the testimony, rather than accepting namecalling as legitimate argument.
The Fighting First should live up to its name. We're popping some corn.
*We have to research this dollar amount, as it is markedly different than that stated by critics on the right and left. UPDATE: So far as we can tell, all of the citations of a larger figure source themselves back to MoveOn's page about its 2006 success stories. When one looks at FEC reports, the much smaller figure cited in the MSNBC story is listed under Independent Expenditures. Thus, we're assuming that the rest of the figure is individual contributions to Walz's campaign given via a MoveOn.org contribution mechanism. Not rocket science to figure out that MoveOn.org won't be providing that service again.
We're even more curious how much the right spent trying to brand Walz as MoveOn.org's lapdog, after Walz had already said his piece and moved on to substantive criticism of Petraeus. [end update]
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