MoveOn's money

Matthew Hoy
By Matthew Hoy on September 10, 2007

You can see a full size PDF of today's MoveOn.org ad in today's New York Times by clicking on the accompanying image. I've got to say that this is probably the most disgusting piece of political hackery since Grover Cleveland had to endure taunts of "Ma, Ma, where's my pa? Gone to the White House. Ha, ha, ha."

It will be interesting to see what the Democrat Party's reaction to this will be. Radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt highlights a comment from a Los Angeles Times online debate that attempts to spin the "betray us" as the rhetorical equivalent of "someone who doesn't tell the whole truth."

That says something about how out of line MoveOn.org is if the best it's defenders can do is argue that an Army general is lying to Congress rather than treasonous.

Watching Fox News' "Special Report with Brit Hume," I was intrigued by an exchange this morning during Petraeus' testimony to the House Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees.

Florida Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen: Once again, I offer my colleagues the opportunity to use this hearing to distance themselves from the despicable ad that was published today, calling into question the patriotism of Gen. Petraeus.

Hawaii Democrat Rep. Neil Abercrombie: Point of order, Mr. Chairman. Nobody has to distance themselves from something they weren't associated with.

Ros-Lehtinen: Take it easy.

Well, Abercrombie appears to be in the clear. But here's a list of all of the elected representatives who've received MoveOn.org money, and how much they received, for the last few cycles. Follow the links for the complete list that includes losers too -- they may run again in 2008:

[I believe I've culled the list of all candidates who are not currently serving in Congress.]

2006 cycle

House candidates

Giffords, Gabrielle (D-AZ) $5,000
Gillibrand, Kirsten E (D-NY) $5,000
Hare, Philip G (D-IL) $5,000
Hodes, Paul W (D-NH) $5,000
Murphy, Patrick J (D-PA) $88,112
Perlmutter, Edwin G (D-CO) $5,000
Rodriguez, Ciro D (D-TX) $163,643
Sestak, Joe (D-PA) $5,000

Senate Candidates

Klobuchar, Amy (D-MN) $5,000
Sanders, Bernie (I-VT) $5,000

2004 cycle

House candidates

Bean, Melissa (D-IL) $4,250
Cleaver, Emanuel (D-MO) $5,000
Edwards, Chet (D-TX) $5,000
Higgins, Brian M (D-NY) $5,000
Lampson, Nick (D-TX) $5,000
Moore, Gwen (D-WI) $4,000
Rodriguez, Ciro D (D-TX) $4,000
Ross, Dave (D-WA) $5,000
Schwartz, Allyson (D-PA) $250

Senate candidates

Bayh, Evan (D-IN) $1,000
Boxer, Barbara (D-CA) $1,000
Dodd, Christopher J (D-CT) $1,000
Dorgan, Byron L (D-ND) $1,000
Feingold, Russ (D-WI) $1,000
Lieberman, Joe (D-CT) $16
Lincoln, Blanche (D-AR) $1,000
Mikulski, Barbara A (D-MD) $1,000
Murray, Patty (D-WA) $4,000
Salazar, Ken (D-CO) $4,000
Schumer, Charles E (D-NY) $1,000
Wyden, Ron (D-OR) $1,000

Presidential candidates

Gephardt, Richard A (D) $16

2002 cycle

House candidates

Carson, Julia (D-IN) $5,000
Grijalva, Raul M (D-AZ) $5,000
Harman, Jane (D-CA) $303
Herseth Sandlin, Stephanie (D-SD) $5,000
Holt, Rush (D-NJ) $520
Inslee, Jay R (D-WA) $252
Larsen, Rick (D-WA) $591
Ross, Mike (D-AR) $4,000
Schiff, Adam (D-CA) $493

Senate candidates

Harkin, Tom (D-IA) $719
Johnson, Tim (D-SD) $163
Landrieu, Mary L (D-LA) $8,067
Lautenberg, Frank R (D-NJ) $5,000
Pryor, Mark (D-AR) $4,591

If you see a senator or representative close to you, I encourage you look them up and ask them what they think about the MoveOn.org ad and what they're going to do about the money they've received. Might I suggest that returning the funds to MoveOn would be an unsatisfactory response; the money would be better spent on something like the Wounded Warrior Project.

0 comments on “MoveOn's money”

  1. Nick Lampson (D-TX) was running for re-election to the newly redrawn 2nd congressional district in 2004 instead of the 22nd district he now represents.

    But I have sent his office an email asking them if he plans on accepting future campaign donations from moveon.org. As a registered, regular voter in his district, I look forward to his response.

  2. “Lieberman, Joe (D-CT) $16″ ??

    I’ll bet there’s a story there….

    Senator Lieberman was not running for re-election in 2004; he was re-elected in 2006. This suggests that the entire list should be checked for accuracy, starting with whether or not the candidates were running in the years listed.

  3. And who could give a more accurate response than the politicians appearing on the list. Go ahead and ask them, I'm sure they'll get right back to you.

  4. i'd be particularly interested in what patrick murphy & joe sestak have to say...given their military backgrounds.

  5. I think there may be people missing -- I'm fairly sure MoveOn was actively opposed to the Republican running for Senate in Ohio in 2006 (and gave money to his [victorious] opponent, Sherrod Brown.) Wikipedia agrees with me.

  6. Blue, Gen. Petraeus is not a politician. He is serving as a commander of those who serve this country voluntarily. There's a difference.

  7. Blue, Gen. Petraeus is not a politician. He is serving as a commander of those who serve this country voluntarily. There’s a difference.

    Indeed. And might I posit that it's likely a violation of the UCMJ to offer false testimony to Congress? if nothing else, it'll catch the old catchall of conduct unbecoming an officer

  8. ira:
    Specifically what false testimony did Gen Petraeus offer to congress? And be careful now, not to offer false testimony yourself!

  9. El Rushbo not only said it -- he bragged about it.

    STEPHANOPOULOS: You've taken a lot of heat from conservatives over your position. Here was Rush Limbaugh this week.

    RUSH ARCHIVE: If Chuck Hagel had been around during D-Day with the same kind of media we have today, he would have demanded that the invasion stop after the landing because there had been so many deaths. War is not something you put on a timetable.

    STEPHANOPOULOS: He calls you "Senator Betrayus."

    HAGEL: Well, listen, everybody has to be somewhere, everyone has to make a living. Rush has to make a living, and he has a right to say whatever, uh, he wants.

    http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_020507/content/0205074.guest.html

  10. Only a creep like the wide-stance restroom aficianado Blue Texan could compare an off-hand remark by a talk-radio host with a [strangely discounted] $65000 ad in the New York Times accusing the commander of US troops in wartime of treason.

    Hagel is a senator with a right to shoot off his mouth and a right to be insulted by talk-radio. To insult the C-in-C in a war zone by calling him a traitor is treason----and I won't descend to Blue Texan's Minneapolis-stall-location but fly over his specious moronic spurious imbecilities.

    Plus he's a lyin' sack of s***!

    Barbara Boxer [or Bobo as my CA relatives call her] is actually humorously hilarious in her little diatribe. Wonder how her novel about her fictional sexual adventures ever sold? Probably as well as Britney's dance routine went over on MTV Award night. To have a Marxist female insult a leader of soldiers in wartime makes even Harry Reid look less like a sheep in sheep's clothing.

  11. One correction- Grove Cleveland endured taunts of "Ma, Ma where's my pa?" prior to his election. "Gone to the White House Ha Ha Ha!" was added by his supporters after he won his 1884 election.

  12. First time here. Really not impressed by Blue Teetee who doesn't get that a military general is forbidden by law to engaging in politcal attacks. We have a professional military that doesn't get involved in politics for very good reasons. Though I'll bet Blue Testes would like a military dictator ship as long as it was socialist.

    To attack someone who can't make responses is bullying. To attack a man with decades of prestigious service is despicable.

  13. Blue Texan--

    The "betrayal" referred to by Rush refers specifically to the fact that Hagel is a dyed-in-the-wool RINO, i.e., he runs as a Republican and talks and votes like a Democrat. To us right-thinking Americans, this is betrayal-- of his party.

    MoveOn makes no such qualification in its despicably slanderous ad. It baldly accuses a 30-year veteran with forsaking his oath to the Constitution, as well as his well-known personal integrity, merely to curry favor with his Commander-in-Chief.

    How exactly did MoveOn know he was going to lie? I mean in terms that would carry weight in a court of law? Did they sneak in to his office and purloin a draft of his statement? Is it asking too much for them to actually hear what he had to say before making such serious accusations?

    I would like to recommend the same course to Tom Lantos and the other Loseocrats. Before you disbelieve his testimony, at least listen to it. He made no claims that "victory was at hand", words Count Lantos put in the General's mouth. He offered a sober and realistic assessment of conditions in Iraq. But then, you didn't bother to listen to him either, did you Blue?

  14. I never wrote anything in support of the ad, nor did I question Petraeus' honesty.

    I just think it's hilarious when you right wingers, given the kind of attacks your kind engage in every day (see Limbaugh, Rush; Hannity, Sean; Boortz, Neil; Defeating Terrorism & Liberalism; Hitlery the Lesbian Marxist; Kerry the Traitor; Max Cleland = Osama; the Swift Boat Liars; etc., etc.) get the vapors over what you happen to deem rhetorical excesses.

    When you routine call half the country traitors -- "Defeatocrats" -- and accuse them of hating their own country and the troops or worse -- you have no moral authority whatsoever to compalin about negative attacks, no matter the severity.

    You practically invented them.

  15. Sorry Blue Texan, but you are wrong. Politicians are open game when it comes to being labeled liars because they do lie about 90% of the time, irrespective of their party affiliation. There was absolutely no basis, whatsoever, for Petreaus to be labeled as such.

    So while you say you do not support the ad, will you also have the courage to say that it was wrong and inappropriate?

  16. Apparently, you can't read. You are in no position, given the rhetoric employed by the right on daily basis, to ask anyone to renounce anything -- let alone to criticize others for the very tactics you employ.

  17. Blue Texan, it is apparently you who can't read. I make a distinction, which I believe to be a genuine one, when the target is a politician. Military personnel, unless there is proof of lying, should be given the benefit of the doubt. The tactics you decry are weapons used by both left and right partisans and by almost all politicians. Therefore, a politician has no right to cry "woe is me" when those tactics are used against him or her.

    As red said above, it is scurrilous to attack Petraeus when he has no ability to defend himself.

  18. This very bizarre and arbitrary notion that high-ranking generals are a) not political and b) above any and all criticism is both naive and disturbing. Your phony distinction belongs in some second-rate Banana Republic, where no one question the Generalissimo, not the United States.

    BTW, I seem to remember the wingnuts trashing the generals that came out against Rumsfeld. That doesn't count, right? And it was okay for Wolfie and Rummy to trash Shinseki too, right?

  19. Blue Texan, you are a slippery one! Please focus on what this discussion is about. What is at issue here is a despicable ad that accuses a well-respected general of lying and betraying his country BEFORE he has made his presentation to Congress and therefore BEFORE the contents of his testimony were known. You, apparently, think this acceptable. I do not. That is ok. We have a difference of opinion.

    As for your most recent counters, which are basically irrelevant to the discussion at hand, you need a bit of a civics lession I guess. Please understand that in the US the military is accountable to the civilian government. In a Banana Republic the head of the military and the head of government are one and the same. That is why deference to military leadership, in the narrow manner that I described above (i.e. not calling them a liar or accusing them of betraying their country in the absence of evidence supporting such an argument) is not naive or disturbing. It is common courtesy and proper.

    Your next two points directly relate to the military's role in the US. I, too, was not happy with the way people trashed the generals that questioned Rumsfeld. In a democracy they clearly are free to speak. However, at the time there were questions raised about whether it is acceptable behavior for generals to question their civilian leadership. I am not a military historian so don't know whether their behavior was acceptable or not according to custom. As for Wolfie and Rummy "trashing" Shinseki, first they are his boss under the structure in the US and therefore have every right to question his conclusions. The fact that Shinseki turned out to be correct, while they were wrong, does not change the appropriateness of their challenges to him. Second, they did not "trash" him, at least not in the same sense that the MoveOn folks trashed Petraeus, as you seem to imply.

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