Wow, the ads are flying fast and furious now. This is the latest from Andy Harris’s Congressional campaign:
Surprisingly, I only recognized one “regular” person in the ad so he didn’t just get a bunch of shills. Maybe you’d count Governor Ehrlich as a shill but remember he was on board with Harris even before the primary.
And as I’d hoped, those contributions from regular folks like you and me to the Club For Growth have paid off. The cavalry arrived with not one, but two spots:
It’s interesting that no one has asked Frank about his stance on the misnamed “Employee Free Choice Act”, unless it came up in one of the debates I didn’t attend. While the Club For Growth may be making a misplaced assumption in that commercial, they are fairly dead on in the second example. Here’s what I wrote in my coverage of a Democrat forum last November:
(Kratovil) felt that the government “(has the) responsibility that families have health care,” and we should pool our resources to insure everyone.
When I use quotes, that’s the words out of his mouth. It’s also reflected right on his website. Under “Universal Health Care…Means Universal” Frank notes:
For nearly a century leaders in Washington have been talking about universal, affordable health care for all Americans.
(snip)
Universal coverage cannot be achieved until we accept the premise that every adult and child must be insured. If elected to Congress, I will support and advocate for true universal coverage and will provide leadership in forging consensus on a policy that provides such coverage without harming employers.
I strongly disagree that every adult and child MUST be insured; the choice should be up to the end user. I certainly recommend that they have health insurance, but that market should be opened up to allow more options and make the cost more bearable – not via mandate but by freeing people to buy insurance across state lines, reducing the amount of mandated coverage, etc. etc. I’ve frequently covered this ground before.
But Frank still contends that Harris is the one backed by special interests:
There they go again. For over a week now, Andy Harris has been attacking me the same way he attacked Wayne Gilchrest and E.J. Pipkin in the primary. Now, with his poll numbers continuing to slide, he has called on his old friends at the Club for Growth to come to his rescue and join the TV ad wars attacking me. Together, Andy Harris and his Club for Growth backers are distorting my views on health care, ignoring my proven record of cracking down on illegal immigration, and flat out lying about my commitment to middle class tax cuts.
It says a lot about Andy Harris that in the midst of our nation’s worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, he is cozying up to an extreme special interest group whose agenda includes eliminating taxes on Wall Street speculators, risking the future of social security on the stock market, and eliminating government regulation of our financial markets. He rails against “Wall Street fat cats” during our debates, but he has no problem accepting over $1.2 million worth of support from those same “fat cats” when he needs help smearing his opponents.
Personally, I’m honored to join Wayne Gilchrest and E.J. Pipkin in the ranks of those who just aren’t extreme enough for Andy Harris and his buddies at the Club for Growth. We’re in the midst of a crisis caused by corporate greed, fiscal irresponsibility, and a failure to provide proper oversight to our financial markets. I’m running against an opponent who is pushing more of the same failed policies that got us into this mess. As for me, I’m running for Congress to fight for Maryland families, not Wall Street special interests.
Frank, you’re not Ronald Reagan, so don’t use his phrase. And personally I’d prefer his old friends at the Club For Growth – the people who make America work – to your new Beltway insider friends at the DCCC, those guys whose lack of regulation in reverse, such as their mandates to banks to make mortgage loans to people who hadn’t the assets to cover them (like making banks count unemployment payments and welfare checks as income), set the foundation for the financial house of cards coming down around us. I hold them personally responsible for the devaluation of my investments, not the “Wall Street fat cats” who fairly negotiated their benefit packages.
I also just proved above that the Club For Growth is NOT distorting your views on health care, you want universal health care. It says that right on your website.
And quit pandering to families! As a single person I’m just as (if not more) concerned about the issues facing our nation today. If you were really concerned about families you would stand for ways to help them prosper by leaving more money in their pocket for them to spend or save as they like. (Included in that is keeping the capital gains tax low, which the Club For Growth stands for. Do you?)
Besides Frank, while you cherrypick some of what those producers of society who back the Club For Growth’s efforts purportedly support, do you support school choice as they do? How about legal reform to stop the abuse of lawsuits? (Oh wait, you’re an attorney. Never mind.)
Being conservative is NOT being extreme and I refuse to accept even the premise that it is. Mr. Kratovil, you may be talking a moderate’s game in the campaign, but I saw you when you were running for the Democrat nomination and you had no problem being associated with those radical tax-and-spenders in Annapolis then. You embraced Martin O’Malley until you realized that most of us in the First District are taking it in the shorts with his fiscal incompetence and are the bulk of the reason his approval numbers dipped into the mid-30’s, then you threw him under the bus.
This ought to bring some good responses. Oh, by the way, Final Frontier, congrats on having your Daily Times comment included in the Kratovil newsletter. I really don’t think that Andy Harris will alienate himself from everyone else in Congress, he’ll just be alienated from the ones who have steered our financial Titanic. The common-sense ones will accept him as their own – you can bet on it because I’ve already asked Andy Harris that question.
By the way, I may add some pictures here later so check back tonight. I have a fundraiser to attend. I decided I had enough pictures and text from the fundraiser for a post, so it’ll be my noontime post tomorrow.
Wow, I’m getting famous! Glad to see the wisdom of Final Frontier is spreading 🙂 Michael, you wrote, “quit pandering to families! As a single person I’m just as (if not more) concerned about the issues facing our nation today.” Seriously? You are criticizing Democrats for pandering to families? Which party has been claiming the mantle of “Family values” for years? It has always bothered me that the Republicans seem to suggest that the only people with values are in families, when some families have no decent values at all, and some single folks–even those who don’t go to church–are better role models for this country. By the way, I don’t think 90% of conservatives are extremist, but I do think Andy Harris is an extremist. Just look at his voting record, where he frequently votes alone or in a very tiny number of legislators. Clearly, he is on the extreme on many issues. Kratovil will be a Congressman we can respect, and who will earn the respect of his peers. We cannot afford to have our representative be someone who is seen as an outsider even by members of his own party.
No, I’m really tired of candidates talking about “Maryland families” – how about talking about all Marylanders?
For the most part I have no problem with those issues claimed by the GOP as “family values” – I’m pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, and pro-school choice and homeschooling. However, I don’t think any of the above should be entrenched in the Constitution which is where I differ a little from my peers.
Regarding Andy’s voting record, if he’s right and the other 46 members of the Maryland Senate prefer to take a politically correct stance, I have more respect for taking a stand. Besides, based on the proportion of D’s to R’s in the Senate a party line vote is 33-14 so even a united GOP looks small. (I don’t anticipate that being the case in 2010, I think something like 27-20 is possible. At least a vetoproof minority for whoever the GOP elects to boot O’Malley out.)
And if you compare the number of House members on the Republican Study Committee to the number on the Republican Main Street Partnership that Wayne Gilchrest is a member of, you’ll find that Andy would be among a lot of folks on his side, not be an “outsider.”
I will give Frank props for searching out the pro-Kratovil comments on the websites and media – why Andy doesn’t choose to do the same with his vocal supporters I don’t know.
I think the answer is that in general, the Democrats are more organized this year than they ever have been (not too hard, since we Dems have typically been pretty goofy in our campaign strategies), and I think we are more organized than the Republicans this time out. Democrats are super motivated–we may not win the District 1 race, but we are going to do our darndest and will present a significant force on November 4. I respect your views on the whole “family values” thing–I disagree with your positions, but we can agree that the Constitution is no place to be legislating morality!
Shills, or no shills, some of the people appearing in that ad were filmed during the primary and were referring to Wayne Gilchrest. Now your candidate slightly repackages them (i.e., uses a different part of the film clip) and acts like they were referring to Frank Kratovil. I’m sure that these “regular folks on the street” really knew Frank back before the primary and really considered his policies and positions before they spoke about Kratovil, hmmmm. Republican remix?
You better bring me some proof because in rewatching the commercial I can tell just when and where several of the segments were filmed (at Perdue Stadium). This would have been in July, and the last one where the woman is in the coat (which could be questionable) mentions Kratovil by name.
Pretty weak folks.
Visit Bud over at No BS Zone and run both ads off You Tube at the same time, then pause on the (1) guy wearing a hooded sweatshirt with a forklift in the background; and (2) the woman with the blond bob (there are two – the one with the fuller face) who appears to be standing in front of a refrigerator case in a market. Same clothes. Neither one refers to Kratovil by name. Pause both commercials at the relevant points and compare.
You can say it is weak – but you were the one who commented that there appeared to be no shills. I was just drawing your attention to facts that might suggest that the commercial was something less than that which it claims to be. After all the ad is entitled “What People are saying about Frank Kratovil”, and it seems relevant if some of those people were talking about someone else when they were filmed.