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October 12, 2010 07:57 PM UTC

Desperate Dems using McCarthyism?

  • 16 Comments
  • by: Laughing Boy

First, McCarthyism is partially defined by Wikipedia as:

…a term used to describe the making of accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence.

Although McCarthy was eventually partially vindicated, the technique of throwing a horrible accusation out, and then asking the accused to prove otherwise is antithetical to our system here in the U.S.

So why, then, are the Dems taking the ball and running with it by accusing the Chamber of Commerce of using foreign money to win elections here in the U.S., while providing no proof whatsoever?

More blow the fold…

David Zurawik, the Media Critic at the Baltimore Sun (h/t to Ed Morrissey at Hotair) writes a scathing condemnation of this ad:

Says Z…

Check out this new ad from the Democratic National Committee. I am sure we are nowhere near touching bottom on the level to which these attack ads will sink by Nov.2, but this is a new low so far into the midterm battle.

Here is what’s so appalling to me: The ad makes the totally unsubstantiated charge that the Chamber of Commerce is taking money from foreign interests and using it to “steal our democracy.” And worse, President Obama is out on the campaign trail, according to the New York Times, creating an echo chamber by making the same reckless claims just as the ad hits the airwaves. And when CBS newsman Bob Schieffer Sunday asks David Axelrod if there is any proof for the claim, the senior Obama aide says they don’t need proof — it’s up to the Chamber of Commerce to prove it isn’t true.

All of this flies in thew face of some recent history, but more importantly, you have the President and the Vice President engaging in this horrific, unfair tactic and admitting it.Emphasis mine:

[Obama said:] “You don’t know,” he said here. “It could be the oil industry, it could be the insurance industry, it could even be foreign-owned corporations. You don’t know because they don’t have to disclose. Now that’s not just a threat to Democrats, that’s a threat to our democracy.”

Oh really, Mr. President?  Hmmm..Perhaps you have a point.

Foreign-connected PACs

Election cycle:2010

Total: $12,204,154

To Dems: $6,517,903

To Repubs: $5,581,701

The Times goes on…

The Democrats have offered no evidence that the chamber is using foreign money to influence the elections. The chamber has overseas affiliates that pay dues to the main organization but says it has a process to segregate those funds from any used for electioneering.

“The D.N.C. is going to exhaust itself trying so hard to change the political conversation,” Thomas J. Collamore, the chamber’s senior vice president of communications and strategy, said in a statement. “Its ad attacking the U.S. Chamber is a blatant attempt to avoid a serious discussion of Americans’ top priority – creating jobs and growing the economy. The ad is ridiculous and false.”

David Axelrod, the president’s senior adviser, was asked Sunday by Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation” on CBS if he had any evidence that the chamber was using secret foreign funds to influence the election.

“Well, do you have any evidence that it’s not, Bob?” Mr. Axelrod replied. “The fact is that the chamber has asserted that, but they won’t release any information about where their campaign money is coming from. And that’s at the core of the problem here.”

The Democratic committee’s spokesman, Hari Sevugan, likewise offered no evidence and suggested it was up to the chamber to disprove the assertions. “Serious questions have been raised,” he said in an e-mail. “If they want to clear this up, they can open up their books.”

The chamber is hardly the only organization playing a role in the campaign that has international affiliations and gets money from foreign institutions. Among others are groups on the political left like the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the Sierra Club. The law requires them to isolate foreign money from any domestic political activity.

For how easily the left pulls out the sheiks of “McCartyism!!!” when none exists, you’d think they’d be a little more careful about actually executing it.

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16 thoughts on “Desperate Dems using McCarthyism?”

  1. but the full definition of McCarthyism specifically includes baseless charges of Communism as part and parcel motivation for the alleged subversion and disloyalty one is being accused of.

    And unless you want to tell me your source, McCarthy was never vindicated. Maybe other Red Scare politicians were (Richard Nixon leaps to mind) but Joe McCarthy was the absolutely most cynical politician our country has known. Even Huey Long had more moral motivation behind what his actions than McCarthy.

    1. Not specifically related to Communism.

      Here’s an excerpt from Arthur Herman’s book:

      Joseph McCarthy -Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator

      The declassified Venona decrypts have revealed to the public the full extent and depth of Soviet spying in America and proved that fears of Russian espionage networks at work in the highest reaches of the government were not fantasy but sober fact. Meanwhile, independent sources from iron curtain Hungary have confirmed Alger Hiss’s role as a Soviet spy, just as Russian sources (including his former KGB case officer) have finally definitively established that Julius Rosenberg was a central figure in the Soviet spy network (although the importance of the material he provided on the atomic bomb, and the degree of his wife Ethel’s involvement, is still under debate). Even the truth about Owen Lattimore, the most famous of McCarthy’s “victims,” has finally come out, thanks to a former Chinese espionage agent’s memoirs and declassified FBI files, which go a long way to vindicate McCarthy’s original charges. In retrospect, the cause McCarthy made his own – anticommunism – has proved to be more valid and durable than the basic assumptions of his anti-anti-Communist critics.

      I don’t condone what McCarthy did, I reject it.  The partial vindication part was a side note to my diary.

      1. as being prompted by real threats; it’s another to say that the man himself was correct because he knew his charges were true.

        This is why I mentioned Nixon; he was the one guy who kept asking questions about Alger Hiss which made that a cause cГ©lГЁbre. (And really marked the starting point of the Red Scare.)

        McCarthy, on the other hand, was a nobody, a cipher who managed to get appointed to the Senate to fill a vacancy and was so highly regarded by the RSCC that they sent him to cosmopolitan Wheeling, WV to announce that he was running for election in 1950. (In those days candidates didn’t usually do that in their home states. Maybe travel was too expensive, I’m not sure.) By all accounts, he pulled the “53 communists are in the State department” statement out of something he had read somewhere, but was in no way part of investigating. As we all know, he ended up taking full advantage of this without regard to lives destroyed and liberties ignored.

        Which, of course, is one reason why McCarthyism can never truly be vindicated; regardless of how much of a threat Communism was, the fact that the hysteria surrounding it allowed the Bill of Rights to be effectively suspended is a black mark on our history that can never come clean. And McCarthy himself whipped it up with no regard for anything but his own career. He neither knew nor cared about Communism.

        Now, to the point of using it to describe this ad. It may well be that this ad is a cynical lie. But if we go back to wikipedia, McCarthyism is still much more than just cynically lying and questioning the patriotism and loyalty of your target; it’s also the specific excesses, the persecution of people based on rumor and supposition rather than fact, and the destruction of reputations and lives, that make McCarthyism what it was (and is). So, calling this McCarthyism is still excessive.

  2. Democrats are suggesting foreign corporations could be contributing to the Chamber of Commerce because foreign corporations are known to contribute to the Chamber of Commerce? OH NOES HOW MEAN

    And then Democrats are suggesting that foreign money could be used to run negative ads, since the Chamber has no disclosure and refuses to even comment on whether they are doing it? OH HOW HORRIFIC my eyes my eyes

    The whole point of this copypasta diary seems to be that we should be ashamed of criticizing a corporate clearinghouse for spending lots of corporate money on pro-corporate candidates.

    So not only are there no limits on contributions because of the Republican Supreme Court, not only are there no disclosure requirements because of the Republican filibuster, but now even criticism is not allowed because sensitive Republican feelings may be hurt?

    Um, no. The Chamber of Commerce exists primarily to launder corporate money into lobbying efforts without tarnishing any particular corporate name. I think that’s awful, and I’ll continue to criticize it, and I hope you can find a way to dry your eyes.

    1. Democrats are accusing the USCOC of spending money from its general fund to campaign for specific candidates.  It is known – the USCOC admits – that their general fund has accepted foreign money (at least $400,000, but there’s a large pot of direct contributions that are completely undisclosed and unknown).  That money is in a “fungible” fund – there is no distinct accounting that would prevent those foreign-contributed dollars (or their identical brothers who they gladly replaced in the regular expenditure fund so that they’d be free to campaign) from being used in the campaigning.  The USCOC has specifically refused to refute the charge that foreign funds are fully separate and non-fungible with campaign funds.

      To suggest it’s McCarthyism does a disservice to the people mistreated under that policy with no basis whatsoever (and, regardless of their political party, no crime or serious corruption having been committed).

  3. In July Bennet was being interviewd by the chamber during the primary for their endorsement.  As you recall they endorsed Norton.  If their money was so tainted, why was Bennet going after it?

  4. Does he really want to bring that up right now? You can count on a Republican congress investigating the foreign donations that helped propel him to the presidency.

        1. Christine O’Donnell is the subject of a politically motivated investigation?

          Oh wait, I looked it up and she’s not. She’s not even the subject of a perfectly just investigation.

          You don’t know what a witchhunt is, do you?

            1. but except when he’s defending jokes about terrorism killing Muslim Americans (in direct contradiction to what Jesus taught), beej doesn’t make me mad. I have fun pointing out his errors, which he has to acknowledge at least subconsciously. I suppose I might devote too many of my keystrokes to it, but it’s not out of anger or frustration.

  5. it permits non-tranparent donations without limitations.

    The typical response from the tight is that a ctime is not a crime unless one gts caught.

    Forensic accountants are needed to insure that elements like the Mexican Cartels don’t launder money into our election cycle.

    They impact Colorado, as much as the midle class mentlaity wants to deny it.They aren’t the only ones.

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