We’re not taking this BS lying down
The Koch Brothers group Americans for Prosperity has launched a $6.1 million ad attacking President Obama. You can tell they are prosperous when they spend over $6 million on one ad. In fact, this is now the second time Americans for Prosperity has spent around $6 million on an attack ad against the president.
I won’t link the odious ad but you can watch it HERE if you must.
Obama for America (OFA), the Obama reelection campaign, has responded quickly and, to my mind, very effectively. This response video is pretty unusual. It features OFA deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter talking plainly and simply about the lies in the ad. The ad is so blatantly false, she says, “The Washington Post said the ‘erroneous’ attacks were made ‘without shame’.
And, yes, Stephanie Cutter uses the phrase “BS”. Hallelujah!
I’m thrilled to see the Obama campaign responding as quickly and directly to these hideous lies as they are. It’s a big departure from previous campaigns and helps to avoid the “swiftboating” that took out John Kerry in 2004.
More of this please?
UPDATE: Best comment on Reddit so far:
Did anyone else just see a political campaign director talk to us as if we were adults capable of understanding 3 dimensional concepts? I swear she used a cohesive argument, like, more than just a soundbite. Whole. Fucking. Sentences.
UPDATE 2: Here’s the transcript for those that can’t view videos. It was shot in the Chicago OFA office:
Hi, I’m Stephanie Cutter. I’m Deputy Campaign Manager here at Obama for America and I wanted to arm you with the facts about the latest attack from Big Oil.
You may have heard of the Koch Brothers. They’re secretive oil billionaires bankrolling Republican campaigns and now they’re backing Mitt Romney. Pretty simple reason for this, President Obama would take away billions of dollars in unnecessary oil tax breaks. Mitt Romney would protect them. So now they’re spending 6 million dollars on an ad that is so blatantly false that the Washington Post said “They have no shame”.Let’s get the facts out, because it’s important that you guys know the truth. President Obama’s helped create hundreds of thousands of clean energy jobs. Projects in all 50 states. And the way these oil billionaires and their front groups completely ignore the truth is breath taking. Let’s take some crazy examples from their attack ad.
They claim the administration gave money to build electric cars in Finland. Um, no. The Department of Energy funding was specifically for US jobs at US facilities. Sure enough the company is employing 700 workers in California and they’re planning to build a plant in Delaware.
OK, another ridiculous claim, they said we sent money to China to build traffic lights. That’s wrong again, those traffic lights were assembled here, in this country, and helped expand our light manufacturing industry in this country.
They said we gave money to a company building solar plants in Mexico. Nope, wrong again. Our money is going to build a solar plant here, in America, with American workers.
These guys are going to say whatever it takes to tear down the President. They will literally say anything. They oppose expanding clean energy, they oppose higher fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks. So we’re going to call their BS when we see it. And we need your help to call them on it too and to set the record straight.
So share this, tweet it, facebook it. I keep hearing about Tumblr and, whatever that is, please use that, too! And thank you for all of your help.
