Morgan Griffith is in trouble for his do-nothing, no-ideas attempt to intrude on our 9th District representation. So bereft of ideas is the GOP, its new “Pledge” and its 9th District candidate, that Griffith has taken to wearing a shirt saying that he can beat Boucher. That’s it? Wow! He thinks he is Tootle’s the Train! Talk about underwhelming! And so, to the rescue comes another corporate front group, Americans for Job Security (AJS), which is apparently run from an UPS mail box and also an office suite in the same building as Karl Rove’s new money mill, Crosspoint GPS.
This past week the New York Times ran a front-page expose on AJS here. Other stories about AJS appeared at Huffington Post and Washington Independent.
The Roanoke Times reported that last week that Congressman Rick Boucher requested a Lynchburg station to remove the AJS ads. At issue were a number of false statements in the ad, including that Boucher sides with Nancy Pelosi more than 96% of the time. It is not that there is anything wrong with that or that the vilification of the House Speaker is justified in any way. But that is a blog for another day. The RT’s Mike Sluss wrote:
Boucher said the ad also is deceptive because the opencongress.org survey gives the same weight to innocuous measures such as a resolution naming a post office as it does to far-reaching legislation such as health care overhaul, which Boucher opposed. The same survey shows Boucher voting with Republican Bob Goodlatte of Roanoke County on 51 percent of the 1,829 roll call votes the two have cast since January 2007.
Boucher also cited evidence from the National Journal, which found Boucher the 198th most liberal Congressman in the House. In other words, he’s right in the middle of the pack, a centrist. That didn’t stop AJS from trying to deceive voters by falsely implying in the ads that Boucher is both extreme and a rubber stamp at the same time. Having found the ads factually inaccurate, one station, WSET in Lynchburg (the ABC affiliate for most of western Virginia), pulled them.
Who or What is “Americans for Job Security?” One thing is certain, it has tried to inject disinformation and lies into the 9th Congressional District Race in Virginia, $600,000 dollars worth of disinformation (and more probably forthcoming). According to Wikipedia AJS is a
” Virginia-based 501(c)(6) group that OpenSecrets.org describes as “a pro-Republican, pro-business organization” headed by David Carney.”
Here’s FactCheck.org’s take on the organization. (My aside: “leans” Republican? Have you see the ads? Come on, Factcheck.org, tell the truth. Don’t give us spin from AJS’s website! The group is strongly Republican. Its foray into Dem primaries was manipulative at best. Sourcewatch calls AJS a frontgroup for Republican and corporate interests. Also according to Sourcewatch, it is thought that Marck Racicot, former Bushie and one time chairman of the Republican National Committee is behind AJS.
All along, we have been saying stand up to the lies. Finally, we have a Democrat who is not just rolling over and playing dead while the real extremists play fast and loose with the facts, smear, and fear monger. Hopefully, other Dems will take Boucher’s lead and vigorously rebut inaccuracies and smears, all of them.
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