Push-Polling Reported In Massachusetts

My wife got this call as we were watching television. Apparently it just got worse and worse in terms of the unhinged anti-abortion, anti-tax talking points it kept spewing.

I also got a call to donate to Scott Brown (I'm a registered Republican) and was able to forcefully say no, Mr. Brown supports torturing and America should not be a country that does that and thus he won't be getting a dime from me.

But how can push polls be outlawed? Wouldn't the pusher claim it was a legitimate poll? Outlawing polling by phone stops legitimate polls too. A do not call list could stop them, but again would stop legitimate polling too. Outlawing lying in political ads, push polling included, would be nice, but how? And that's all with the admission that just exposing these things doesn't do it, because you can[t expose it until the calls are made, and then you inform only the people who pay close attention, and they're the least likely to be fooled.

I received one of these calls. It was nothing but a smear against Coakley. I'm not a big fan of her's but would never support Scott Brown and his robo-calling scum.

I got the AICPac call last night. I said I was voting for Coakley, but once it became clear this was a push poll I also told them I was a "Tea Party Republican" when given that option.

Is anybody really shocked by this? The RNC itself was doing the same thing back during the summer HCR silliness, implying that the bill would use voter rolls to deny care to Republican voters:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/28/politics/main5272000.shtml

Do we even need to bring up Willie Horton, or the "McCain had a black child" incidents? Typical Republican sleaze.

We got two Scott Brown push polls at our house - first on my line asking if we still would vote Martha even though she wants to use taxpayer money to fund abortion. The second on my husband's line asking if he knew that Martha supports gay marriage.