Yes, "It's these phony grassroots", indeed. Let's take a sentimental journey down Kilroy's faulty logic path: The poll is real. The results are real; they say more than three in four Ohio residents described themselves as either angry or dissatisfied with the federal government--with Kilroy's failed policies. So if the poll and the results are real then in order for it to be "these phony grassroots" the citizens must be fake. So she's saying more than three in four Ohio residents are fake Republican interlopers from out-of-state... What?!? That kind of lunacy is even harder to follow than Kilroy's magical thinking that spending money we don't have will lower the deficit! Kilroy's looking more like Norma Desmond every day.
Let's explore a more likely reality: the Congresswoman made a Freudian slip.
Several sources have already reported on Congresswoman Kilroy's fliers seeking $10/hour "paid volunteers" who would, ostensibly, devotedly campaign for Kilroy out of their deeply held belief in... needing cash.
This could be a cultural difference between the values of the the Ohio 15th District and the "values" of Washington, D.C. where they have to declare "Prostitution Free Zones" in order to keep pay-for-play at bay, but here in the OH-15 we don't call it love if you have to pay for it.
And looking over Federal Election Commission filings it gets worse: Kilroy's astroturfing campaign receives assistance from twenty-two additional mercenary campaigners from Working America, the independent expenditure arm of the AFL-CIO. (For the record, Working America pays better than Kilroy for Congress.) A review of the Working America astroturfers' addresses as filed with the FEC reveals nearly half of them don't even live in the 15th District.
So, in review, Kilroy's "volunteers" are:
1) Compensated for their pro-Kilroy opinion.
2) Bused in from outside the voting district.
That is the very definition of astroturf campaigning! And it's pathetic.
This is what REAL grassroots looks like:
 |
| Lt. Colonel Steve Stivers with actual volunteers |
And within the ranks of Congresswoman Kilroy's astroturfer/"these phony grassroots" mercenary army there are some accompanying hypocrisies:
1) In the wake of the Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission ruling, which expanded the rights of unions and corporations to make independent expenditures in federal elections, Congresswoman Kilroy made a big show of signing a pledge opposing independent expenditures. If she were truly principled about the issue she would have refused the aid of Working America but, apparently, she was only putting on a show for media benefit. Changing her opinions based on who she thinks is watching makes Mary Jo Kilroy a sleazy flip-flopper.
2) The rental vans used to haul around Kilroy's mercenary Working America crew filled up with BP gas. Twice. One would expect that after all the Congresswoman's carping about how "BP must pay" and after she signed the bpmakesmesick.com petition that her campaign staff wouldn't patronize the company. As it turns out, all that rhetoric was just for show.
Mary Jo Kilroy is disingenuousness personified.
Posts
