It’s interesting how we never really know what the election is going to come down to, at least far as issues that dominate the political world’s attention go. A month ago, Mark Foley was a largely-unknown backbencher from Florida, and no one cared. Ten days ago, John Kerry was telling plenty of jokes about Bush, none of which could possibly be newsworthy.
And a week ago, robo-calls were a fairly normal campaign technique that seemed unlikely to get much attention. And yet, here we are.
“In 53 Congressional campaigns across the country, including the Pennsylvania 6th, the Connecticut 4th, the North Carolina 11th, the New Hampshire 2nd, and the Illinois 6th and 8th (and possibly all races), the National Republican Congressional Committee is conducting a $2.1 million campaign to make it appear as if Democrats are spamming callers with telemarketing calls.
“The NRCC hired Conquest Communications Group to conduct a massive nationwide robocalling campaign with calls specifically scripted to appear as if they’re coming from the Democratic candidate — in violation of FCC regulations on such ‘robocalls,’ which requires the identity of the caller to be stated at the beginning of the message [47 CFR 64.1200(b)(1)]. The call begins with ‘Hello. I’m calling with information about,’ and then says the name of the Democratic candidate. There is then a pause; if the recipient hangs up here, they will receive repeated calls back with the same message, potentially up to 18 times or more (according to one callee). If the callee doesn’t hang up, they hear a smear message from the machine about the Democratic candidate. The NRCC thinks the legality of the calls is, conveniently, a ‘complicated legal question that’s not going to get adjudicated this weekend.'”
Yes, of course, Republicans will just lie and cheat their way through the next day or so and then we can sort out all of this unpleasantness.
I particularly liked the NRCC’s use of the word “complicated.” It’s exactly the same word Rumsfeld used when he told us we shouldn’t ask anymore questions about his mishandling of the war in Iraq. It has the same meaning in this context — let’s hash out the details later; in the meantime, “honorable people” are working on these things. Please.
As Kevin Drum noted, these calls should be the lead story on every network right now.
So here’s a good question: is the mainstream media even going to bother reporting on the saturation robo-calling currently being funded and coordinated by the National Republican Congressional Committee? As you may recall, the tactic here is to call people multiple times, at odd hours, whether or not they’re on the Do Not Call registry, with messages that sound like they’re from the local Democrat. The purpose is to get people annoyed with the Democratic candidate, even though the annoyance is really coming from the Republican side.
This kind of tactic is only going to get more common unless the media trumpets it loud and clear and the Republican Party pays a price for it on Tuesday. Conversely, if it flies under the radar and helps produce a few GOP wins, they’ll do it again. And again. And again.
The Republican Party is clearly expecting it. If there are legal consequences, they figure that they’ll pay a few fines and tell a judge how really sorry they are about poising the political process, just like they’ve done before. Then they’ll laugh about at it at the next majority-party caucus meeting.
Josh Marshall has been all over this for days, and so head over to TPM for the details, but this is quite obviously a Grade A scandal. It’s coordinated and created, not by some fringe independent expenditure, but from the Republican establishment. They’re cheating and they’re counting on the media to let them get away with it.
And they’re probably right.