We learned our lesson about self-described “moderates” from Rick Snyder, right? RIGHT???!!!
In her run for U.S. Senate, Terri Lynn Land is counting on Michigan voters to believe that she is a moderate Republican and that Gary Peters is an extremist liberal. Her previous stint as the Secretary of State probably helps with that false perception. Almost nobody sees Secretaries of State as highly-partisan ideologues.
However, all it takes is a cursory look at Land’s record and the people she hangs around with to know that she’s anything but moderate and hasn’t been in a long time in an effort to win tea party support.
Land is an Republican National Committee (RNC) Committeewoman, elected to represent Michigan on the same slate as over-the-top homophobe and racist Dave Agema. While other Republicans around the state and around the nation are vocally condemning Agema for his ongoing odious comments against gays and Muslims, Terri Lynn Land has remained silent, defering to her spokesperson to issue platitudes about not tolerating “discriminatory acts or speech” and lauding her belief that “all people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect”. These flowery platitudes don’t explain why she actually HAS tolerated Agema’s hideous comments.
This morning, Allison VanKuiken tweeted this photo of Land with her pal Agema:
Agema isn’t the only extremist that Land is pals with. While she has yet to receive the endorsement of any major Republicans, the Koch brothers’ political group Americans for Prosperity is already running ads to support her candidacy. In fact, they attempted to use our state Capitol to do so before being booted out. There are few groups more extremist than AFP and they are willing to spend millions to support the candidacy of Terri Lynn Land.
But Land’s friendship with Agema and support by the Koch brothers are just the beginning. Let’s have a look at some of her positions. As the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has pointed out, Land’s role as an RNC committeewoman is largely to “promote the party platform”. One look at the GOP’s platform is enough to show you just how extreme she is.
Here are some of the things that Land supports in her promotion of the Republican Party platform:
- Turning Medicare into a voucher program
- Banning all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest or to save a mother’s life
- Privatizing social security
- Banning marriage equality for same-sex couples
- Opposing any legislation that would limit the size of clips or magazines for guns
- Banning women from combat
- Consider returning the USA to the gold standard
Here are a few other positions and actions that show her true extemism:
- Spoke out against the bipartisan agreement that ended last year’s Republican shutdown of the federal government
- Vowed to do “whatever it takes” repeal or defund the Affordable Care Act and joined other extremist tea partiers like Senator Ted Cruz in signing the Senate Conservative Fund’s pledge to “defund Obamacare”
- Has worked with Super PACs to support her candidacy in possible violation of federal election laws
- As Secretary of State, allowed the use of so-called “dark money” from anonymous donors to fund “issue ads”
- Believes the odd and incorrect notion that the Affordable Care Act is responsible for rising auto insurance rates
- Raised money off the tragic events surrounding the civil war in Syria
Land has held no public events in a very long time. She’s counting on spending enormous amounts of money — including millions of dollars of her own money — to buy this election rather than talking to voters and having to answer questions about her extremist views.
The good news is that it does not appear to be working. A recent analysis conducted by Politico.com of the race between her and Democratic Congressman Gary Peters puts Peters ahead by double digits. It’s a rather unconventional analysis based on social media reach on Facebook. However, it’s proven to be quite accurate in past races:
Last year, in a post-election analysis in Politico, we reported that eight out of nine toss-up Senate races were won by the candidate with the more engaged Facebook fan base. And in the 2012 House elections, 20 of the 33 most competitive races across the country were won by the candidate with a measurable Facebook fan engagement advantage. […]So far [this year], we have trained our forecasting model on four key Senate elections in North Carolina, Alaska, Kentucky and Michigan. In those races, our two-party contest Facebook model shows Republicans potentially picking up one seat.
According to our Facebook forecast, in North Carolina, incumbent Sen. Kay Hagan, a Democrat, leads State House Speaker Thom Tillis, the leading Republican contender, by 52.7 to 47.3. In the open Michigan Senate race, Democratic Rep. Gary Peters leads the announced Republican candidate, former Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, 55.6 to 44.4.
We still have ten months to go before the election and Land has enormous amounts of money to spend. Not only that, outside groups like Americans for Prosperty and other Super PAC supporters will be spending millions of dollars of their own money. They are counting on pulling the wool over the eyes of Michigan voters and painting Land as a moderate, sensible Republican.
You can be very sure that Democrats will be focused on disabusing Michiganders of that provably outrageous lie. And so will we.
