April 30, 2010 02:29 AM UTC

Romanoff Resorts To Just Making Shit Up

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• by: MADCO

The only consistent message of the Romanoff campaign about why he would be better choice than Senator Bennet is that Senator Bennet accepts PAC money and Romanoff is not accepting PAC money this time, though he has in the past.

I and others have argue that this is a weak message. That is barely works on anyone except tea partiers, who are not likely Romanoff primary voters anyway.  That campanoff will have to reverse the position if he is the nominee in order to be competitive in the general media wars.  

And most importantly that it only matters if Romanoff can show that Senator Bennet’s votes have actually been corrupted by the donations. And so far he has been unable to do that.

I previously posted a lengthy post going through several Bennet votes comparing them to his PAC/corp donors. And it looks like those donations are not really affecting his votes.

(Not to mention that his percentage of PAC donors is the lowest of all the Colorado Congrssional delegation, not counting the self-funded Polis, and may even be a lower percentage of PAC donations than Romanoff raised while he was in the state house running from a safe seat.)

But in the recent debate at Colorado College in C-Springs Romanoff resorted to just making shit up (MSU).

As reported by the Colorado Statesman toward the end of the debate the candidates had a chance to directly address each other and ask questions.

Romanoff saved his most pointed attack for the debate’s last few minutes. During the final exchange of the night, Romanoff questioned whether a campaign contribution from a private, for-profit college had influenced Bennet’s actions on a Senate committee last month when, Romanoff charged, Bennet “did nothing” to protect students from being harmed by “predatory loans.”

Sounds kind of like AR thought he had a smoking gun.

But, not so much a smoking gun as made up baloney- which campanoff has had in abundance from the beginning.

The Statesman does a nice job summarizing the facts.

Romanoff tied Bennet’s “inaction” in the Senate to a vote taken in a House committee last October, when Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, proposed an amendment to financial reform legislation aimed at bringing loans made by schools like Westwood under the regulatory wing of a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

Waters explained at the time why she thought it necessary to close a loophole in the House legislation that would exempt so-called “gap loans” – offered by private, for-profit colleges like Westwood to cover expenses beyond whatever traditional educational loans students qualify for – from oversight by the new agency. The amendment failed on a 33-35 committee vote.

Next, according to the Romanoff campaign’s “Westwood bullet” release, the Bennet campaign “[r]eceived a contribution from Westwood College on 3/19/10 for $2,400,” followed by the Banking Committee’s consideration of its consumer protection bill three days later, where “Sen. Bennet had the opportunity to stop these predatory lending practices but did nothing.”

Sound like a damning sequence of events? Except that’s not exactly how it happened.

According to congressional records, rather than “[do] nothing,” Bennet voted to bring “gap loans” – and most other consumer loans, for that matter – under the authority of a newly created Consumer Financial Protection Board, charged with regulating any loan “offered or provided for use by consumers primarily for personal, family, or household purposes.” In other words, Bennet voted for the legislation Romanoff said he failed to introduce.

In addition, the Senate bill Bennet voted for in March was an entirely different bill than the one Waters unsuccessfully tried to amend in October. Where the House bill included extensive loopholes that allowed educational “gap loans” to escape rigorous oversight, the Senate bill didn’t. The Senate’s bill – in the headlines this week as Republicans eventually agreed to allow it to come up for debate after voting to filibuster it three days in a row – establishes more sweeping powers for its Consumer Financial Protection Board than the House does in its version, which would create a stand-alone agency.

Wow- so Bennet didn’t do what Romanoff said he did. I’m shocked, shocked I tell you, that campanoff would just MSU.

But what’s that you say- Westwood did donate to Bennet and so something bad must have resulted.

Yeah –

But what about Westwood’s $2,400 campaign contribution?

….Bennet’s vote was the opposite of what Westwood would have wanted anyway.

bolding for emphasis is mine.

Wow- if Romanoff is even close to right about how potentially corrupting PAC/Corp donations can be, then he’s got to be just about ready to endorse Bennet and get out.  It’s clear that Bennet can take the donations and still vote his conscience and vote for what’s good for Colorado and the country.  

So, what we it appears the D’s have is a primary with candidates who have accepted PAC/corp donoations, with one candidate having decided to forgo the donations he wasn’t likely to get in this election anyway, who then claims that PAC/corp donations are bad and influence the votes and should be returned, though, of course, he didn’t return any of the PAC/Corp donations he’s ever received.  Exactly which of Romanoff’s votes in the House were bought back when he was accepting PAC/corp donations?

More to the point- campanoff has yet to define a single vote or action of Senator Bennet’s that was bought.  Instead they resort to MSU and implications and innuendo.    

Hooey.