GOP Smear Machine, Freedom's Watch, Crashes and Burns

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported this week that Freedom’s Watch, the right-wing advocacy group is closing up its smear-generating shop.  Proclaimed as the right's answer to the powerful progressive grassroots organization, MoveOn.org, Freedom's Watch never lived up to its hype, despite massive funding by Nevada billionaire Sheldon Adelson. 

Founded by noxious former Bush press secretary, Ari Fleisher, Freedom's Watch was touted as a well-financed juggernaut that would propel Republican candidates into national and state offices. Equally distasteful former graduate of the Karl Rove school of deceit, Brad Blakeman started as President of Freedom's Watch but only lasted a few months.

Spokesman for the organization Ed Patru confirmed that the current operation “is pretty much kaput” but refused to say if the group would continue in the future.  Politico’s Josh Kraushaar notes that “the group is going out with one last blast in the Georgia Senate runoff” by running an ad that attacks Democratic Senate candidate Jim Martin, whose daughter was kidnapped, as being soft on crime.

Months ago (April 2008), The New York Times reported the group was in trouble. But after a splashy debut last summer, in which it spent $15 million in a nationwide advertising blitz supporting President Bush’s troop escalation in Iraq, the group was mostly quiet, beset by internal problems that rendered it almost completely toothless.

 

Big proponents of Freedom’s Watch once talked about spending some $200 million, a figure that officials now say was exaggerated. Lending to the aura of ambition, the organization moved into a state-of-the-art 10,000-square-foot office in Washington and hired a staff of about 20, with talk of bringing in scores more for a vigorous campaign to promote conservative issues.  Blakeman's leadership soured quickly and one of the ways in which John McCain was counting on to carry an even more negative message couldn't get its act together.

 

No need to pass the hankies out here; there will be no tears over this dishonest endeavor's demise.

Comments

[D.R.Scott]

Ha ha ha.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of incompetents.

Then again, the failure of Freedom's Watch occurred for the same reasons that McPalin's presidential campaign self-destructed: an stubborn unwillingness to change with the times. The old reliable tactics didn't work anymore. Still, Republicans repeatedly tried to shove a cassette into a CD player.

For example, it's ridiculous to vilify Democrats as "Tax & Spend" zealots when the economy is collapsing and, hey, guess who's been in charge the last eight years? It's hypocritical to bellow "support our troops" while viciously amputating soldier's benefits. It's idiotic to trumpet how competently Republican can govern the country as the world watched New Orleans drown. It's suicidal enact anti-immigration policies when Latinos have consistently voted Republican in the past.

But this is what happens when Republicans live in a gold-plated bubble. It's impossible to look outside and see how the rest of the world has changed.

Let's hope they keep it up.

[Dr. Larry Mitchell]

"Republicans repeatedly tried to shove a cassette into a CD player."

Beautiful way to put it, D.R.!