{"id":12626,"date":"2007-08-22T12:50:08","date_gmt":"2007-08-22T16:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/12626.html"},"modified":"2007-08-22T12:50:08","modified_gmt":"2007-08-22T16:50:08","slug":"freedoms-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/freedoms-watch\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Freedom’s Watch’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The WaPo noted<\/a> today that congressional Dems, and Republicans that are at least open to the possibility of a sensible Iraq policy, are about to get hit by “an advertising blitz from Bush supporters determined to remain on offense.” (And, by using the word “offense,” the Post implicitly buys into the conservative message.)<\/p>\n

A new pressure group, Freedom’s Watch, will unveil a month-long, $15 million television, radio and grass-roots campaign today designed to shore up support for Bush’s policies before the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, lays out a White House assessment of the war’s progress. […]<\/p>\n

The new privately funded ad campaign, to run in 20 states, features a gut-level appeal from Iraq war veterans and the families of fallen soldiers, pleading: “It’s no time to quit. It’s no time for politics.”<\/p>\n

“For people who believe in peace through strength, the cavalry is coming,” said Ari Fleischer, a former Bush White House press secretary who is helping to head Freedom’s Watch.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Since the start of the war, there have been a few truly ridiculous right-wing ads. Before the 2006 midterms, the RNC paid quite a bit of money to air what was, for all intents and purposes, an al Qaeda recruitment video<\/a>. Around the same time, the Progress for America propaganda organization ran the now-infamous “They Want to Kill Us<\/a>” ad.<\/p>\n

But Freedom’s Watch’s ads are equally nauseating, if not more so. There are four different ads<\/a>, each more offensive than the last. In one, a veteran who lost a leg is shown arguing that we have to stay in Iraq because “they attacked us.” In the next, a mother of a fallen soldier (who apparently doesn’t mind being exploited by the right-wing smear machine) argues that we’ll invite another 9\/11 unless we stay in the middle of Iraq’s civil war.<\/p>\n

Given the hacks behind the nonsense, no one should be surprised.
\n
\nMike Allen notes<\/a> some of Freedom’s Watch’s backers.<\/p>\n

Freedom’s Watch aims to do for the GOP what the MoveOn political action organizations have done for Democrats. [Bradley A. Blakeman, who is president and chief executive officer of Freedom’s Watch], who was a member the White House senior staff in Bush’s first term, said Freedom’s Watch is designed as “a never-ending campaign \u2013 a stable, credible voice of reason on generational issues that won’t rise and fall with election cycles.”<\/p>\n

The board consists of Blakeman; Fleischer; Mel Sembler, a Florida Republican who was Bush’s ambassador to Italy; William P. Weidner, president and chief operating officer of the Las Vegas Sands Corp.; and Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition.<\/p>\n

The donors include Sembler; Anthony Gioia, a Buffalo businessman who was Bush’s ambassador to Malta; Kevin Moley, who was Bush’s ambassador to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in Geneva; Howard Leach, a former Republican National Committee finance chairman who was Bush’s ambassador to France; Dr. John Templeton of Pennsylvania, chairman and president of the John Templeton Foundation; Ed Snider, chairman of Comcast-Spectacor, the huge Philadelphia sports and entertainment firm; Sheldon Adelson, chairman of the Las Vegas Sands Corp. and ranked by Forbes magazine as the third wealthiest American; and Richard Fox, who is chairman of the Jewish Policy Center and was Pennsylvania State Chairman of the Reagan\/Bush campaign in 1980.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Blakeman described this as a “grassroots campaign.” One wonders if he could say it with a straight face.<\/p>\n

And the chief spokesperson of this absurd effort is none other than Ari Fleischer, whose record on Iraq<\/a> is amusing, in a macabre kind of way.<\/p>\n

The desperate, dishonest, and cynical campaign is coming soon to a TV near you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The WaPo noted today that congressional Dems, and Republicans that are at least open to the possibility of a sensible Iraq policy, are about to get hit by “an advertising blitz from Bush supporters determined to remain on offense.” (And, by using the word “offense,” the Post implicitly buys into the conservative message.) A new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}