GOP Campaign Ad

[BT]

Richard Tisei: Not Your Typical Ad, Not Your Typical Politician

[Christians4LessGvt]

cool

[hnumpah]

Late Super PAC Ad Buy Urges African Americans In Ohio To Vote Republican Because Lincoln Freed The Slaves
By Evan McMorris-Santoro | TPM

In the final days of the campaign in Ohio, the stops have been pulled out in the scramble to eke out a win. And that means one super PAC calling on African Americans to vote against President Obama because Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.

Cable viewers in several markets across the state are being treated to ads by an obscure self-described "alternative conservative" super PAC called the Empower Citizens Network. One of the group's ads accuses Obama and Democrats of imploding the economy by forcing mortgage companies to lend to "unqualified borrowers" while the Soviet national anthem plays. Another promises welfare recipients that "Republicans can save your money source" by reducing regulations on business.

And then there's the ad which one viewer told TPM is airing in the Columbus area on cable. Our source caught it a couple of times on MSNBC. That ad is the Empower Citizens Network spot that tells African Americans it's a "lie" that Democrats support them and cites the Emancipation Proclamation as evidence.

Details on Empower Citizens Network are sketchy. It was formed in June, according to its FEC filing, but its quarterly filings in July and October showed the group had neither raised nor spent any money. FEC filings made by the group last week (here and here) show it spending about $98,000 on campaign advertising in Ohio, mostly for newspaper ads.

Documents filed by the group with Time Warner Cable in Ohio identified Akron-area financial planner Bob Warther as the point of contact for Empower Citizens Network. Warther is listed as the group's treasurer in FEC filings (although it is spelled "Walther" in one letter to the FEC that he signed). Warther's office referred questions about the super PAC to Lance Davis at Akron-based Universal Marketing Industries. Davis did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
 
The newspaper ad taken out by Empower Citizens Network was similarly over-the-top, as described by the Toledo Blade:
 
Among the claims made by the ad is that the Obamas throw lavish parties at the White House for "socialist friends" that include flying in $100-per-pound Kobe beef from Japan; the President's $800 billion stimulus did not produce any net jobs, and that "this deep recession was not caused by the Bush tax cuts, Republican lax regulation, or Wall Street greed."

Empower Citizens Network's TV ad is one of a group that have emerged on the scene in the closing days of the election in Ohio, according to Kathy Kiley, who studies political ad buys at the Sunlight Foundation.
 
"They're a late spender, part of the October Surprise Club," she said. Public records on file with Time Warner show all of Empower Citizens Network's ad buys have been placed to cover the last week of the election.
 
The Empower Citizens Network ad uses some old Republican rhetoric to try and earn African American support for the GOP. "Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act while Democrats opposed it," the narrator says at one point in the Empower Citizens Network ad.
 
Many African American Republicans will say their party still hasn't figured out how to expand its support among black voters. John Sununu, a prominent surrogate for Mitt Romney, recently posited the Colin Powell only endorsed Obama because he's black. In Florida, a move by the Republican-led state government to eliminate early voting on the Sunday before Election Day was seen by African American churches as aimed squarely at them.

Smaller ad buys targeted at African Americans by Republicans are not only limited to Empower Citizens Network. A super PAC named Pivot Point put an ad on BET in Cleveland and Seattle this month featuring an African American calling Obama's support for same-sex marriage "a slap in the face."

Polls show African American voters have yet to be convinced the GOP is the party for them. The PollTracker Average shows Obama leading Mitt Romney by a margin of 92 to 5.5 among African American voters. African Americans voters are overwhelmingly registered Democratic, a split that's held for decades.

http://news.yahoo.com/super-pac-ad-buy-urges-african-americans-ohio-210436263--politics.html

[BT]

Good to see the GOP still has an active outreach program.

I think MLK Jr. was a Republican. Politifact says that may be true because when he registered in Alabama, the only party that would let him was the GOP.

[hnumpah]

Got a couple of answers from Answer.com:

1. Dr. King was a Republican. The Republican Party was formed to help abolish slavery.

This seems to be a rather simplistic view, and what some claim.

2. Dr. King was not a Republican. Steve Klein, a senior researcher with the Atlanta-based King Center, said that King never endorsed candidates from either party. "I think it's highly inaccurate to say he was a Republican because there's really no evidence," Klein said. A King biographer, Taylor Branch, also said that King was nonpartisan.

Rev. Joseph Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with King, said there is no reason why anyone would think King was a Republican. He said King most certainly voted for President Kennedy, and the only time he openly talked about politics was when he criticized Republican Barry Goldwater during the 1964 presidential campaign.

"That was not the Martin I know and I don't think they can substantiate that by any shape, form or fashion. It's purely propaganda and poppycock," Lowery said. "Even if he was, he would have nothing to do with what the Republican Party stands for today."

On hearing of billboards sponsored by the National Black Republican Association and claiming that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican, Lowery said "These guys never give up, do they? Lord have mercy."

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_political_party_did_martin_luther_king_jr_support



Hovering above Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue in Dallas, a provocative billboard makes a controversial claim in black and red block letters: “Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican. VOTE REPUBLICAN!”

It's a claim, and a voter registration tactic, that has been used before, despite a decidedly mixed reactions from community members who see it.

The ads posted this year -- as well as similar billboards posted in Austin and in Houston back in 2009 -- are the brainchild of Claver Kamau-Imani, a Houston, Texas, church leader and the founder of RagingElephants.org, a conservative group that aims to recruit more African Americans for the Republican Party.

Kamau-Imani said the use of the American Civil Rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner is appropriate and accurate.

“The use of Dr. King, because of him being an icon in the community, we feel would be most effective," Kamau-Imani told CBS DFW. "That’s why we used it. We have the documentation to back the claims we’re making on the billboard.”

This documentation is hard to pin down, however. In 2009, Kamau-Imani told Fox News that King's niece, the Rev. Alveda King, said her uncle was indeed a Republican. But while video of Alveda King's claim is available on YouTube, Kamau-Imani acknowledged there's no documentation to back her up.

That 2009 billboard was taken down early, after the leader of the local New Black Panther Party chapter organized a press conference rallying support against the $3,000 sign.

"Martin Luther King may have very well believed in some of the Christian principles of the Republican Party, but Dr. Martin Luther King was not a Republican or a Democrat," Quanell X told Fox News at the time. "[He] would not be with the party of Newt Gingrich, he would not be with the party of Sarah Palin, he would not be with the party of Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage or Sean Hannity."

In 2011, Politifact investigated RagingElephant's claims, enlisting the help of several noted historians and King biographers.

Thomas Jackson, a history professor at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro and author of "From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice," told the fact-checking site that while the Republican party of Abraham Lincoln's era defended black rights, this attitude shifted after the 1870s. Jackson said he would call King a "'tax and spend' democratic socialist."

David Garrow, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning, "Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference" said "It's simply incorrect to call Dr. King a Republican," adding that the activist did not ascribe to either party, but almost certainly voted for Democrats John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

Dr. King's son Martin Luther King III, as well as various other friends have all objected to this label. Ultimately, Politifact said the claim was false.

Back in Dallas, Peter Johnson, an activist who worked alongside King in the 1960s, told CBS that the billboards are simply offensive.

“Using his image is one thing, exploiting his legacy is another," Johnson said. "To distort his legacy, it’s sacred to some of us. We know the suffering and sacrifice that was made.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/29/martin-luther-king-jr-republican-billboard-texas_n_2039332.html

His biography on biography.com mentions no political affiliation.

http://www.biography.com/people/martin-luther-king-jr-9365086

[BT]

Quanell X looks to be a genius.

None of the people he mentioned were on the scene during MLK Jr.'s lifetime.

[BT]

Dr. Kenneth W. Goings, professor and past chairman of the Department of African American and African Studies at Ohio State University, said in an email message that King may have had to register as a Republican to vote in Alabama in the 1950s. Goings said: "Daddy King was a Republican as were most African Americans in the South until the early 1940s.  But the combination of Dem. Party outreach and Republican Southern strategy meant that by the 1950s the South was well on the way to the split that is evident now. I’ve not seen any evidence that MLK Jr. was a Republican but if he registered to vote it would have been as a Republican in Alabama simply because the Dems. would not allow black voters.  Throughout the (Civil Rights) movement he worked with the northern Dem. Party...I wonder if somehow people have just confused Sr. and Jr. (maybe even on purpose)."


http://www.politifact.com/tennessee/statements/2012/jan/23/charlotte-bergmann/another-republican-claims-martin-luther-king-jr-wa/

[Plane]

That 2009 billboard was taken down early, after the leader of the local New Black Panther Party chapter organized a press conference rallying support against the $3,000 sign.

"Martin Luther King may have very well believed in some of the Christian principles of the Republican Party, but Dr. Martin Luther King was not a Republican or a Democrat," Quanell X told Fox News at the time. "[He] would not be with the party of Newt Gingrich, he would not be with the party of Sarah Palin, he would not be with the party of Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage or Sean Hannity."

I am not looking for the Dr.MLK Jr. endorsement of the party of Lester Maddox either.


Some political commercials are thought provoking for their stupidity, either because they evidence stupidity , or because they seem to expect me to accept them stupidly.

It has always struck me as fantastic that the party of Jefferson Davis and James Buccannon could quickly dump its traditions by handing them whole and unbroken to the party of Lincon and Grant.

Woodrow Wilson let his wife run the city of Washington , and she insisted on greater segregation. Untill the fiftys racism was the reason that there was a solid south of yellow dog Democrats.

Then Truman deseegregated the military somewhat , Kennedy rendered assistance to Dr. MLK Jr. in extreme distress and Johnson helped the congressional Republicans push the Civil Rights Act . From the Sixtys till now the Democrats have styled themselves as the minoritys only friend.

I don't think that another reversal is going to work , because the stupidity of the whole "reversal" idea is overwhelming.