{"id":4225,"date":"2005-05-18T09:28:07","date_gmt":"2005-05-18T13:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4225.html"},"modified":"2005-05-18T09:28:07","modified_gmt":"2005-05-18T13:28:07","slug":"with-friends-like-these-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/with-friends-like-these-2\/","title":{"rendered":"With friends like these&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I suspect Tom DeLay is thrilled to have right-wing allies who are prepared to spend generously to defend his tarnished name, but I have to wonder if they&#8217;ve thought through the wisdom of their message.<\/p>\n<p>Stephen Moore&#8217;s Free Enterprise Fund <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2005\/05\/17\/AR2005051701155.html\">announced yesterday<\/a> that it would run TV ads nationwide on DeLay&#8217;s behalf. The point of the ads, apparently, is to point out how DeLay&#8217;s scandals have caused a feeding frenzy in the press.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>An anti-tax group said Tuesday it will run television ads likening the media and their reporting on House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to sharks in a feeding frenzy. [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>The group&#8217;s president, Mallory Factor, would not disclose how much the group will spend on the ads but said it will be &#8220;well over $100,000.&#8221; The group does not yet know how long it will run the ads.<\/p>\n<p>Factor said the &#8220;liberal media and government&#8221; have been attacking free market principles and DeLay, who supports their principles. &#8220;It&#8217;s a feeding frenzy on DeLay and we want to expose it,&#8221; Factor said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m not in the habit of giving DeLay&#8217;s friends advice, and if the right wants to spend six figures on dumb ads I don&#8217;t want to stop them, but from DeLay&#8217;s perspective, isn&#8217;t this message counter-productive?<\/p>\n<p>Here we have a nationally televised commercial telling Americans a) that Tom DeLay is facing a series of scandalous charges; and b) the media is taking the charges seriously. Naturally, the ads also help boost DeLay&#8217;s name recognition at a time when his scandals have started to fade from the headlines.<\/p>\n<p>Is it me, or do ads like these actually help Dems bring DeLay&#8217;s problems to the public attention? I&#8217;m happy to get the assistance &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4221.html\">we need it<\/a> &#8212; I just didn&#8217;t expect it from the Free Enterprise Fund.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I suspect Tom DeLay is thrilled to have right-wing allies who are prepared to spend generously to defend his tarnished name, but I have to wonder if they&#8217;ve thought through the wisdom of their message. Stephen Moore&#8217;s Free Enterprise Fund announced yesterday that it would run TV ads nationwide on DeLay&#8217;s behalf. The point of [&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-4225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4225","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=4225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}