{"id":3894,"date":"2005-04-04T13:12:37","date_gmt":"2005-04-04T17:12:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3894.html"},"modified":"2005-04-04T13:12:37","modified_gmt":"2005-04-04T17:12:37","slug":"before-you-get-your-free-ticket-to-see-the-president-a-republican-has-some-questions-for-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/before-you-get-your-free-ticket-to-see-the-president-a-republican-has-some-questions-for-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Before you get your free ticket to see the president, a Republican has some questions for you"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bush was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, last week for another <strike>campaign stop<\/strike> &#8220;town hall&#8221; meeting to discuss privatizing Social Security. As usual, tickets were distributed through a local Republican office. But in a move that may be less common, the GOP office <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abqjournal.com\/opinion\/1garcia04-01-05.htm\">quizzed would-be attendees<\/a> before making the free tickets available. (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/politics\/administration\/whbriefing\/\">via Froomkin<\/a>)<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A spokesperson for Republican Sen. Pete Domenici&#8217;s office, the office that distributed most of the tickets, told the Journal&#8217;s Michael Coleman that people requesting tickets were <b>actually quizzed about their views of the president and his plans for Social Security<\/b>. (emphasis added)<\/p>\n<p>Welcome to the brave new world of over-the-top media manipulation. No critical questions, no spontaneity, nothing left to chance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Public event, public official, matter of public importance. The mind reels.<\/p>\n<p>And yes, Albuquerque is the same city at which residents were <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abqjournal.com\/elex\/204620elex07-30-04.htm\">asked to sign a loyalty oath<\/a> before getting tickets to see Dick Cheney less than a year ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bush was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, last week for another campaign stop &#8220;town hall&#8221; meeting to discuss privatizing Social Security. As usual, tickets were distributed through a local Republican office. But in a move that may be less common, the GOP office quizzed would-be attendees before making the free tickets available. (via Froomkin) A spokesperson [&hellip;]<\/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-3894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3894","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=3894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}