Plausible Deniability
TPM Muckraker has the list fo the 20 Congressional districts that are receiving annoying telephone calls from the NRCC. One of them is the home of the “George W. Bush Stare Into Space 9/11 Reading Room”, Bradenton, Florida and local people are not amused.
According to the Bradenton Herald, Campaign phone calls anger voters:
The calls are being made by Conquest Communications Group, a telemarketer that boasts on its Web site that it can make millions of calls a day using 1,200 lines at its headquarters and another 5,000 at affiliates across the country.
Dic Gresham, a partner in Conquest, referred all questions to the National Republican Congressional Committee, which has paid the Richmond, Va.-based company more than $22,000 since Oct. 23 to make the calls.
The phone calls are targeting registered Republicans and independents and stressing Jennings’ positions on key issues, said Alex Burgos, the committee’s spokesman. They are being made without any coordination or consultation with the Buchanan campaign, he said.
“The more you hammer home the point that Christine Jennings is liberal on taxes and immigration, the more likely voters will go out and vote for Vern Buchanan,” Burgos said.
Oh, don’t bother to attempt to contact Conquest Communications Group via the Internet. Their web site currently consists of a single front page, and if you try to use what looks like a “mail to” icon you will find that it merely accepts your address [don’t call us; we’ll call you]. No doubt they want to avoid a flood of flaming e-mails from angry people.
Now, I know that the candidates say they have no control over ads and other actions by the NRCC, but that’s pure bovine excrement. Tell them that if they don’t stop, you might not be available for the vote for Speaker, and these things will be gone.
4 comments
New Hampshire’s Second Congressional district is getting calls: I’ve received a number of them myself. Both the Professor and I could see them for what they were and hung up on ’em. The calls start out sounding like informational call regarding Democrat Paul Hodes, but then goes on to smear him. It’s not until you get to the end of the call (so I’m told; I hang up on all “robo-calls,” regardless.) that the tape tells you that you’ve just been annoyed by the RNCC.
What were they thinking? After the phone jamming scandal of 2002, folks in New Hampshire are hypersensitive about sleazy campaign tactics involving telephones. (The NH Attorney General is considering kicking some butt, but that won’t happen until after the election.)
Naturally, Charlie Bass denies any association with the groups making the calls, but we all know this was done with a wink and a nod. What this tells me is that Charlie is running scared — as well he should!
Actually, this appears to be a NRCC show, and if the letters in Bradenton are any indicator, it might cost the Republican there the race. The comments all seem to be from Republicans and they are annoyed.
The candidates could stop it if they really wanted to, and many people are of the opinion that if Buchanan can’t get it to stop, he isn’t worth voting for.
According to TPM today, another company is also involved, and the annoyance robo-calls have expanded to more states. These people will stop at nothing.
Why should they, nothing ever happens to them. They do this stuff repeatedly and the media compares to something someone now running as a Democrat did with running for class president in middle school to provide “balance”.