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Labor Group Expands Radio Ad Tying Republicans To Rush Limbaugh
Americans United For Change, the labor-backed political group that recently launched radio ads linking anti-stimulus Republicans to Rush Limbaugh, has just announced that they're expanding the Limbaugh ads to target GOP Sens. Jim Bunning (KY), Richard Burr (NC) and Mel Martinez (FL).
"Now the Obama plan goes to the Senate," the announcer says, "and the question is: Will our Senator, Richard Burr, side with Rush Limbaugh too" --interrupted by Limbaugh's "I hope he fails!" interjection -- "or will he reject the partisanship and failed economic policies of the past, and stand up for the people of North Carolina?"
Chances are, Burr will stick with Limbaugh.
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Josh
Matt
Eric
I love these ads. I do wish, however, that they had varied them up a bit from state to state - a different voice, slightly different text, whatever.
February 3, 2009 10:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
I hope Burr sticks with Limbaugh and guarantee his defeat in 2010. NC's unemployment rate is nearly 9% in large part because this is a banking center. Manufacturing jobs are disappearing. People are hurting and this Burr clown is obstructing.
We can get that seat if the Dems run AG Roy Cooper. Any plans to run Heath Shuler should be shelved immediately. His "good-looking but dumb as a box of hair NFL dude" stichk only plays in the mountains.
February 3, 2009 10:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Absolutely, and you can say the same about any R who is running for re-election in 2010. What was clear from the last election is that people are sick and tired of hyperpartisan bickering. They want results. This is the real benefit of Obama's bipartisanship efforts. It's a win-win. If Senators like Burr vote with you, great. If they don't, they become easier to defeat in the next election. Any Republican Senator from a state that Obama carried should think hard about opposing him.
February 3, 2009 10:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Guess I'm tainted by my residence in Virginia Foxx's district on this one, but wrong messenger and wrong focus. They just luvs them some Rush here in the Fifth District, as well as up in the mountains, in the rural east and in Charlotte.
And a message from unions? Good idea. Yew-yins are just super-popular among the white working class folks here in North Carolina. That's why they were so stunningly successful in their sixty years of efforts to organize the textile mills back before they all shut down and shipped out.
The state's demographics are changing, but I'm not confident they've changed enough for an add from a union tying Burr to Rush is going to do anything other than give Burr really powerful new fundraising pitch.
February 3, 2009 10:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Steve, are you not aware that Smithfield just unionized? The tide is turning, my friend!
You will find yahoos everywhere who love Rush. But Burr is running statewide, not just in the Virginia Fox district. He can't count on Charlotte. Obama won Mecklenburg county with 62%. He won Charlotte by even more.
February 3, 2009 11:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Limbaugh is great. You don't even need to speak badly about the guy. He's such a complete ass he does all the damage to himself.
Elena, Eric or who ever. Please get feedback from every Republican Senator and House member you can get a hold of on if they side with Limbaugh's views and if they agree with Georgia Congressman Gingrey that Rush is a giant in the voice of the conservative movement. Ask them also if they consider themselves a conservative.
Pose a few different questions. Audio of their responses would be great too as it's the gift that keeps on giving.
I mean heck, them siding with a guy that said on January 16, regarding Obama: "I hope he fails." And in a January 21 interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Limbaugh stated: "We are being told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles, bend over forward, backward, whichever, because his father was black, because this is the first black president." should be a strong enough message as to how they regard Obama.
February 3, 2009 10:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dems need to quit worrying about Rush and start paying their taxes...LOL
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9646DBG0&show_article=1
February 3, 2009 10:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yep.
I wouldn't make a comment on rush at all if I were the dems. It only increases his notoriety and "worth" among far-right republicans. As the saying goes, any press, even bad press, is good press. Look at cooter, that's how she survives. Just ignore him.
February 3, 2009 11:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
How many Repub federal appointees/senior executive service managers over the last eight years do you really think paid employment taxes for their domestic/gardening help ??
At least we now have an administration and, more importanly, a media that is actually making the inquiries. Not that the media shouldn't have been making these inquiries the last eight years.
February 3, 2009 11:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
You're actually trying to suggest that none of Bush's appointees were vetted by the press?
February 3, 2009 11:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good point, I actually think that mitt the flip had a similar problem if I recall from the primaries that was pointed out in the press. I also recall other similar problems for republican appointees as well. It's just that we are going through dem nominees right now, which hasn't happened since the clintons' administration.
February 3, 2009 11:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Was Michael Brown?
February 3, 2009 2:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
You got that right...
Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) -- The average tax rate paid by the richest 400 Americans fell by a quarter to 17.2 percent through the first six years of the Bush administration and their average income doubled to $263.3 million
.....since the wealthy get a free ride around here, it's the working class Americans that will have to make up the difference.
Good catch.
February 3, 2009 11:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Using Limbaugh against the party is fun and all, but how about some serious selling of the Stimulus plan, everywhere you look you have GOP acolytes and infotainment talking heads smearing it and not a Democrat in site pushing back and selling it.
It's a PR war and the Obama Administration is losing it. Oh, but the Administration sent out a mass email asking for help...problem's solved.
February 3, 2009 11:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Jonze,
truly, the Repubs are flooding television with thier cherry picking, dissembling, exaggerating comments. Dems are all but absent.
We have a Republican howitzer against a Democratic pop gun. I was hoping this would change with Obama, but some things never change.
February 3, 2009 11:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
...but it's just Limbaugh, Hannity and FoxNews against it. They're just preaching to the marginalized wingnutz, remember?...the dwindling rightwing... Y'all have nothing to worry about...
February 3, 2009 11:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Co-sign. I agree with your observation. 50% of republican voters are for the stimulus plan, so obviously insanity, lush and fox entertainment aren't getting any traction. Dems have to keep the same tone and doing what they are doing, including constantly pointing out that they are agreeing to alot of republican proposals in the stimulus plan. Facts kind of cut against the bluster of the lunatic fringe.
Incidentally, speaking of paying taxes, fox entertainment hasn't paid a nickel in years. Does that seem fair? Nope.
February 3, 2009 11:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Guess what, if corporate taxes were lower here than overseas, our companies would come back as would other international corporations. Business goes where it's cheapest to do business. You don't need an MBA to figure that one out.
February 3, 2009 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Guess what, I don't think it's the tax issue, its the handouts from overseas governments, no benefit costs and lower wages. If we had universal healthcare, that would make products made in america alot cheaper and more competitive.
Another point, they pay taxes on sales in the US, wherever the companies are located. The tax issue is a red herring as always.
You don't need an MBA to figure that one out.
By the way, how can a freaking towel made by a machine in vietnam, with barely any labor at all, be shipped 12,000 miles to the US be cheaper than a towel made by a machine in the South, with barely any labor costs? The transportation costs alone should be an offset to any difference in labor costs. How is that possible?
February 3, 2009 11:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Five letters...ACTWU.
February 3, 2009 11:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, come on. That's why I referred to the south. No unions. However, even with union wages, the labor cost in a freaking towel would be deminimus. They are made by machines virtually 100%. Throw in the transportation costs and there is no way that it would be cheaper to manufacture the towel 12,000 miles away, unless some kind of bs is going on.
February 3, 2009 12:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
>>>>>By the way, how can a freaking towel made by a machine in vietnam, with barely any labor at all, be shipped 12,000 miles to the US be cheaper than a towel made by a machine in the South
That's easy - The U.S. Navy
My son is there now fighting pirates and protecting your right to buy things made with slave labor....which is the rate your income will have to drop to before the American aristocracy brings any jobs back to this country.
February 3, 2009 12:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
1. I don't want to buy anything made by slave labor. I would pay twice as much for a stupid towel if it was made in the USA. How many times do you buy a towel in any event.
2. Even if the labor cost is zero for a towel made in vietnam, the transportation costs would more than offset the towel being made in the USA. That's what I don't get and was my point.
3. I wish your son well and hope he stays safe. And thank him for his service to our great country.
February 3, 2009 12:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Guess what, if corporate taxes were lower here than overseas"... no 'IF' needed.
You're reading those AEI talking points where they compare the rates in the various tax codes.
If you check out the effective tax rates (based on revenues and the taxes companies ACTUALLY PAID) you'll find ours are the lowest of the industrialized world, much as the rates on our wealthy are similarly low.
"Remember, only two kinds of people vote Republican, millionaires and suckers." And even the millionaires don't trust Republicans anymore...
February 3, 2009 3:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
I just posted a list of 21 hard-core GOP rejectioinists. Martinez didn't make the list because he missed a certain vote, the other two are included:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/mare_nostrum/
I hope appeals by unions/others to voters does some good; right now, at least the R-House Members are "solely" focused on campaigning to get their precious chamber back as they confirmed http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/18204.html in their yahoo retreat, not at all in governing (reaching for their inner Gringrich). Lots of R-Senators (as linked) are the same.
Might some voters view their legislative duties differently?
February 3, 2009 11:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
I love this strategy. By tying the remaining GOP to Limbaugh they're further defined as an arch-conservative rejectionist rump party of idiot dittoheads. Republican moderate voters will be further alienated.
And using Limbaugh's own words against him: beautiful.
February 3, 2009 12:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
i have left this comment elsewhere, so if you have read it before.............
PLEASE LET RUSH RANT!!!!!!!!! ON AND ON AN ON.
HE IS THE BEST FUND RAISING TOOL (AND ISN'T THAT JUST THE MOST APPROPRIATE WORD EVER!) WE DEMS HAVE.
MAKE HIM THE FACE/VOICE/CONSCIENCE OF THE R PARTY. EVERY TIME ONE OF THEM OPENS THEIR MOUTH, SETS PEN TO PAPER, OR FINGERS TO KEYBOARD TIE IT
DIRECTLY TO HIM.
LET KEITH MAKE HIM THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD EVERY NIGHT FOR THE NEXT 8 YEARS. ALLOW JON STEWART TO PUT HIM ON THE BBQ SPIT EVERY SHOW.
MAKE SURE EVERYONE ON THE PLANET KNOWS JUST HOW
LOW, MEAN-SPIRITED, RACIST, ANTI-AMERICAN AND IRRELEVANT HE IS. DO NOT MISS AN OPPORTUNITY TO LINK THE R'S TALKING POINTS TO EL DRUGGIES LATEST PRONOUNCEMENTS.........
February 3, 2009 12:37 PM | Reply | Permalink