"Democrats want you to catch Republicans in awkward moments," says Bret Baier in the teaser before a break on Special Report this evening, catching the spirit of the post that follows.
"Don't misrepresent who you are or why you are there. Always tell the truth. Never state that you are an employee or agent of the Democratic National Committee or any campaign or that you are working on their behalf," read the instructions at the DNC's hopenchangey "Accountability Project," protesting too much gushing that their cynical scheme to enlist you — "because it's about YOU" — gratis as a dirt-digging DNC agent is a "grassroots, volunteer project to hold Republican candidates accountable for their claims." We signed on to see what they were up to. More about that below.
We first heard about the Accountability Project from our go-to source inside the Beltway, Dan Riehl, way ahead of the curve as usual in an early-morning post tearing his hair out over the GOP's cluelessness when it comes to new media:
I thought they [the Democrats] disliked this kind of thing when Etheridge was recently caught on tape? Actually it's something I've been expecting and why I continue to insist that the DNC gets new media in ways the GOP still refuses to embrace. It's intent on controlling the narrative, while the DNC is more interested in fueling constituent and blog-based activism from the Left.
"For too long, our politics has been poisoned with misinformation, lies and double-speak," keens The Accountability Project introduction with a wink and a nod, projecting the DNC's own modus operandi onto the opposition: "The most powerful way to combat these tactics is to drag them into the light of public scrutiny."
A little background from The Huffington Post's excellent coverage and then our critique of Dan's take and a few more thoughts:
In a move that could add a broad new element of accountability to elections — or simply make the political process even more gaffe-centric — the DNC is encouraging its followers to upload video, mail pieces or audio recordings of GOP officials to a DNC-run site.
If carried out as planned, the new online tool could drastically alter the landscape of the 2010 elections, with campaign functions contracted out to hundreds of free volunteers. At a minimum, it is a vivid illustration of the modern-day campaign, where a slip-up by a candidate caught on video could have profound impacts on his or her electoral prospects. Aides freely admit that the goal is to create another "Macaca moment" — in which former Senator George Allen (R-Va.) famously doomed his reelection hopes by belittling an opposition videographer with a racial slur — or at least to unearth a viral nugget such as those that changed the course of the health care debate at town halls last summer.
We signed on and quickly found a potential target more or less in our neck of the woods, a Strafford County Republican Committee summer picnic with Tim Pawlenty scheduled in Dover, NH at noon on Saturday, July 10. Hey, that might be fun. We could post some insidiously innocuous footage to foil the DNC's nefarious plotting.
Access to The Accountability Project site's inner functions and imperatives was a piece of cake and also a revelation for a mole like us. Once you get past the disingenuously plain-Jane "grassroots" gateway page, you're right back into President Obama's ultra-sophisticated Organizing-for-America territory, all smiling, politically correct victim-group faces and hope-and-change red, white and blue.
Now a friendly but firm critique of blogbuddy Dan's take. We agree with Riehl and Glenn Reynolds that the GOP establishment's "afraid of losing control" to us tea partiers and grass-roots types, but not to be upset about the Democrats' being so far ahead of us in exploiting new media. Our delvings suggest the sophistical new-media machinations of our friends on the left side of the aisle are just retreads of old stuff from campaign 2008. Whether there's still a beating heart in their moldering email lists is unknown. We placed ourselves there way back when, again, just to keep an eye on what the opposition was up to and got this pathetic piece, obviously timed to coincide with the debut of "Accountability," today:
Dear Sissy, I'm Ann Marie Habershaw — and as the chief operating officer here, I know you don't normally hear from me.
But this election season, we're putting together one of the most ambitious midterm campaign programs in American political history!
We've never had this much staff on the ground in a non-presidential election, and we're doing everything we can to reach out to the 15 million folks who voted for the first time in 2008 to get them back to the polls this fall.
Good luck, Ann Marie. Meanwhile Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform (above) is on the case.
Update: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link.
Update II: Retriever links. Thanks, dear friend!
Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.
Comments