New York Times: Democrats Backing Fake Tea Party Candidates

Increasingly desperate and fearful of a GOP takeover of Congress, the Democratic Party is secretly supporting fake tea party and other third-party candidates in the hopes of diverting votes from Republican contenders.

The stunning conclusion was made in a page one New York Times story headlined“Democrats Back Third Parties to Siphon Votes” – a report by correspondent Jim Rutenberg and published in Saturday editions of the paper.

The Times reported: “The efforts are taking place across the country with varying degrees of stealth. And in many cases, they seem to hold as much risk as potential reward for Democrats, prompting accusations of hypocrisy and dirty tricks from Republicans and the third-party movements that are on the receiving end of the unlikely, and sometimes unwelcome, support.”

“It is one of the dirtiest moves,” Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told the Times. “It’s not as though the Democrats are playing to compete against the third party — they’re helping to build the third party up to make those votes not count.”

The Times detailed numerous races across the U.S. where a “Tea Party” candidate has been working to siphon votes from the Republican candidate. In a close race this third party effort could throw the election to the Democrat.

Arguably, the most serious effort is taking place in Nevada where the Times says supporters of Harry Reid are backing a “Tea Party” candidate named Scott Ashjian.

The Times says: “In Nevada, conservative radio listeners have heard an advertisement promoting the Senate campaign of a “Tea Party of Nevada” candidate, Scott Ashjian. The ads criticize Sharron Angle, the Republican nominee and favored candidate of the actual Tea Party movement in the race against Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader. “

The paper claims that unions, casinos and mining companies backing Reid are financing Ashjian to undermine Angle’s campaign.

The Times examined several key races they indicated this stealth third party ploy was underway, including: 

California: Democratic Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet has paid for an automated recording that calls Republican voters and purports to be from a registered GOP voter. The unidentified voter reveals she is voting for Bill Lussenheide of the American Independent Party, rather than GOP incumbent Rep. Mary Bono Mack, because Lussenheide is a “true conservative.”

Pennsylvania: Volunteers for Democratic House candidate Bryan Lentz in Pennsylvania aided conservative Jim Schneller in his effort to join the race, turning it into a three-way contest with Republican Pat Meehan.

Florida: Candidates listed as having tea party affiliations are running, even though they have been exposed as having no legitimate tea party supporting them. 

Michigan: Fake tea party candidates tried to run for two House seats and a number of state offices. Democratic Party officials were linked to the candidacies, and the candidates were declared ineligible.

New Jersey: Republican House candidate Jon Runyan has a “Stop The Fake Tea Party” appeal on his political website. It states: “Polls indicate that Jon Runyan and career politician John Adler are locked in a dead heat as we head in to election day. Realizing that New Jersey’s 3rd district is tired of the reckless, out of control expansion of government and explosion of debt in Washington DC, John Adler and the Democrat Political Machines in New Jersey and DC have taken this campaign in to the gutter, resorting to baseless attacks and fraud to hold on to this seat. Adler and his cronies have even installed a fake tea party candidate to keep Jon Runyan from winning this seat.”

“It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” Bono Mack told the Times. “It’s desperate, and I think the voters see right through it.” 

When contacted about the subterfuge, the Democratic National Committee issued this statement: “Republicans have no one to blame but their own ideological intolerance for the bloody civil war on their side.” 

This is the now America.

SEATTLE -- When Maria Gianni is knocking on voters' doors, she's not bashful about telling people she is in the country illegally. She knows it's a risk to advertise to strangers that she's here illegally -- but one worth taking in what she sees as a crucial election.

The 42-year-old is one of dozens of volunteers -- many of them illegal immigrants -- canvassing neighborhoods in the Seattle area trying to get naturalized citizens to cast a ballot for candidates like Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, who is in a neck-to-neck race with RepublicanDino Rossi.

Pramila Jayapal, head of OneAmerica Votes, says the campaign is about empowering immigrants who may not feel like they can contribute to a campaign because they can't vote.

"Immigrants really do matter," Jayapal said. "If we can't vote ourselves, we're gonna knock on doors, or get family members to vote."

So far the illegal immigrants going door-to-door aren't meeting opposition. Craig Keller, an organizer for Respect WA, a group pushing for stricter immigration law in the Washington, said he doesn't mind illegal immigrants volunteering for vote drives, he just wants to make sure mistakes on the voter rolls don't allow them to vote.

Aug. 17: President Obama and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. , left, take part in a roundtable discussion with small business owners at Grand Central Bakery in Seattle.

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"Anybody can go out and wave a sign, but when it comes to who's making the choices, there's no question they need to be citizens," Keller said.

In close elections across the country, the immigrant and minority vote is considered key for candidates, especially Democrats.

Earlier this week in Nevada, a television ad urging Latinos not to vote sparked outcry from Democrats, who called it a dirty trick meant to keep Hispanics home and boost Republican candidates. Univision and Telemundo -- the nation's two largest Spanish-language networks -- canceled the ad, which the Republican group Latinos for Reform had planned to eventually run in Nevada, Florida, California, Texas and Colorado through the Nov. 2 election.

Seattle is home to a wide array of immigrant communities, from Latinos to east Africans and Asians.

Congress declined this year to consider overhauling the country's immigration law, much to the chagrin of immigrant advocates who had expected Democrats to do so by now.

Still, OneAmerica Votes launched one of the largest get-out-the-vote campaigns in the state on behalf of Democratic candidates. The organization is an offshoot of OneAmerica, one of the state's largest and the most influential immigrant-rights advocacy group.

Through home visits, phone banks and mailings the organization is aiming to reach about 40,000 registered voters in the Seattle area in an attempt to help Democrats gain ground in key races. Volunteers include other types of people who can't vote, such as legal permanent residents.

About 150 volunteers rolled out in nine cities across Washington this past week, knocking on 3,000 doors.

In Bellevue, a city of nearly 123,000 east of Seattle, Gianni knocked on 25 doors and spoke to 15 people, she said.

One man, a naturalized citizen from the Philippines, said he knew what she was going through after she shared she was in the country illegally.

"There's always a risk," Gianni said in Spanish about her legal status. "But if there's a change, I would feel like I contributed, even in a small part, to a change we all need."

Gianni arrived in the United States on a visa 13 years ago looking for work and stayed. For a while her only son lived here, but has since moved back to Mexico.

"In order for there to be a change to our broken immigration system," she said, "I believe one has to fight."

Arianna Huffington likes free speech...kinda

October 21, 2010 - 13:38 ET
Glenn Beck

The Blaze: Accurate? Arianna Huffington Says Ginny Thomas Called Obama a ‘Tyrant’
GLENN: One of the most reckless things any man of any consequence has ever done was done by Mr. Soros and we'll get into that here in the next 10 days, but let's just put it this way: He believes in global government. I do not. He believes in silence is golden. I do not. Arianna Huffington apparently believes she is the arbiter of what speech is okay and what is not. Arianna Huffington, who is now taking money from the Tides Foundation at the Huffington Post, understand, America, there is a clear choice. You cannot say that, Oh, we all see America the same, the way we used to. They do not see it the same way, but we must not become them. We must not scream for someone else's silence. We must not beat people down like SEIU and the union thugs. We are not them. We are decent, God fearing, tolerant Americans. Jesus turned some tables over. I'm not telling you to keep quiet. I am certainly not telling you to stand down or sit down, but I am telling you walk with love and peace and gentleness in your heart but let the truth be on your tongue and that's what they don't like. When they cannot win on the battlefield of ideas, they shut you down. This is America and I will go down swinging to my last breath. This is America! This is not Venezuela yet.

Here's Arianna Huffington. Do you have it on me first or not?

PAT: No.

GLENN: Okay. We know that she was we played the audio for you a million times, where she has said, you know, Glenn Beck, darling, is so wonderful, but he's like crying fire in a crowded movie theater. Aren't there limits on speech like Glenn Beck's, darling? No, there's not. The only speech worth protecting is the speech that is difficult to hear or sit through, the speech that you vehemently disagree with. I have never called for anyone's speech to be squelched. I will stand shoulder to shoulder with Keith Olberman if anyone tries to shut him down. I will stand with him, and I think he is a despicable man. That is not the way we deal with things in America, but Arianna Huffington doesn't agree with that and now here's the latest that she said.

PAT: She's talking about Jimmie Thomas, Clarence Thomas' wife, who apparently called Barack Obama a tyrant.

HUFFINGTON: It's really strange. It's beyond strange that you have the wife of a Supreme Court justice, not being against Obama. I can understand that. That's her legitimate right, but saying utterly irrational things about Obama. I mean, calling the President a tyrant

GLENN: Excuse me. Stop. Excuse me. Did they not call George Bush a war criminal?

PAT: Terrorist.

GLENN: A war criminal, a terrorist?

PAT: Terrorist, war criminal, Nazi, Fascist.

GLENN: And never, never did I say they should be shut up, that they should not have the right to say that. I say it's wrong. Anyway.

HUFFINGTON: beyond the realm of what is real and that's really what we need to be addressing, not disagreements, not a position, but just irrationality.

VOICE: She has the right to do it.

HUFFINGTON: Nobody should put her in jail, if that's what your question is.

GLENN: Nobody should put her in jail.

PAT: You know, and she says these things in that Zsa Zsa Gabor way. So, it doesn't sound sinister. It just you know, it sounds like she's on Green Acres and so you tend to dismiss it.

GLENN: That's irrationality.

PAT: She's frightening. She's frightening.

GLENN: It is irrationality that they're talking about. It is maybe I don't know maybe there's a mental disorder.

PAT: I'm not saying you can't oppose the President.

GLENN: No.

PAT: I'm just saying that you

GLENN: We should stop all irrational talk. That's irrational. No, you just disagree with it! I mean, that's

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: If it's this is exactly what Stu, can you get the George Soros announcement? I want to read this announcement that came out yesterday afternoon. America, it's one thing to have four advisors, four, of the President of the United States to target you and then to have SEIU and the AFL CIO target you; but now to have moveon.org, Media Matters, the Tides Foundation, and the richest, most powerful man in the world target you. You come to one realization, I must be doing something right.  news@glennbeck.com

From the Desk of Dick Morris

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is so frantic to prevent a meltdown that would cost the Democrats 100 seats in Congress she’s even hinting she may quit as speaker.

Believe her at your own peril!

She’s already written off 50 seats, but now she realizes she may lose 50 more seats that she thought were in the bag.

I revealed weeks ago that 100 Democratic seats were vulnerable to defeat. This is now accepted knowledge, even by Democrats.

So Pelosi is pulling a trick — a sort of “Mutt and Jeff” routine. You may have heard this trick called the “good cop/bad cop” strategy. It’s the same thing.

To show you how it works, let me give you an example.

Rep. Jim Marshall, a Georgia Democrat, is in a tough re-election campaign. He now publicly declares, “Pelosi was never MY choice for speaker!”

He’s even running ads knocking “San Francisco Democrat” Pelosi and claiming that he mostly votes with the Republicans.

To hear Marshall and his colleagues talk, you’d think they’re not at all like Pelosi, no sir!

But there’s only one problem: They’re lying.

You see, Marshall and his colleagues actually voted for Pelosi as House Speaker.

What’s more, they voted for Pelosi’s $787 billion “stimulus” program, Obamacare, the Wall Street bailout, and the rest of Obama’s big-government agenda.

To save their seats in Congress, Marshall and the other vulnerable Democrats need to run from their records and publicly distance themselves from Pelosi and Obama. If they succeed, they’ll re-elect Pelosi as House speaker.

What does Pelosi have to say about the Democrats who are pretending to bash her? She says, “I just want them to win.” Of course! She’s in collusion with the “Pelosi bashers.”

To add to the game play, The Hill newspaper reports Nancy Pelosi is saying she won’t run for speaker again.

Don’t believe a word she and her Democratic colleagues say!Please Donate

Left in pure desperation mode

The desperation is becoming more and more apparent, and it's especially bad when Barney Frank's boyfriend is sent in to heckle candidates. Apparently he is the only one willing to go out there and fight for Barney - and apparently he's a really, really bad heckler. For more on this story please go to Glenn Becks' Web Site. http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/46800/

Talking about a Spineless Puke

On her Headline News channel show this evening, host Behar explained her walk-off by saying, “I thought he was saying something that I construe as hate speech, frankly.” Her guest was former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, who called O’Reilly “a spineless puke.” Ventura’s insult was rather sour-graped, however, by his admission that “the whole Fox [network] won’t have me on.” Sounds like someone has had his feelings hurt by not getting a invitation from O’Reilly or Glenn Beck. But who would want someone like Ventura around other then the Idiots in Minnesota who were stupid enough to vote in a trashy wrestler as their governor? But I guess it can't be any worse then the dumb ass Actor who has ran California into bankruptcy!

Who's View?

Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar angrily walk off the set after their guest's Bill O'Reilly's politically incorrect comment about Muslims attacking America on 9-11. No getting around the truth, if it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck! All of the people who took over the planes on 9-11 and ram them into our buildings killing thousands of people were all Muslims! What part of the statement that Bill O'Reilly made that the lady's (and I use that word loosely) on The View did not get? All of you people who watched that show believing that all views are discussed and talked about fair and square just got a taste of the real world! Now you can go back to your little la la land where everything is just peachy and continue to watch it! I agree with Bill O'Reilly about getting away from this political correct bullshit and start telling it like it is!

Obama, Democrats Declare War on U.S. Chamber

By: David A. Patten

With massive midterm losses looming, President Barack Obama is blasting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for accepting foreign donations for its political advertising — a charge that myriad watchdogs and media outlets already have debunked as groundless.

The political battle the allegation has touched off appears to be escalating.

It began at a political rally in Maryland last week, when the president echoed a charge that first appeared in a left-wing blog that the Chamber of Commerce had used foreign contributions to help defray its $75 million campaign advertising budget.

Said Obama: "So groups that receive foreign money are spending huge sums to influence American elections, and they won't tell you where the money for their ads come from."

The Chamber immediately denied the report, explaining that its strict accounting procedures keep foreign and domestic contributions separate.
Denunciations that the allegations appear groundless have spanned the political spectrum.

The New York Times on Monday stated flatly in a news article: "The Democrats have offered no evidence that the Chamber is using foreign money to influence the elections." 
On Sunday's "Face the Nation" program, White House senior adviser David Axelrod conceded that the administration has no facts to support its claim, while not backing off on the president's implication that the Chamber may have violated U.S. laws.

When ABC host Bob Schieffer asked whether he had any evidence to support the charge, Axelrod shot back: "Well, do you have any evidence it's not [true] Bob?"

Schieffer's replied by asking Axelrod: "Is that the best you can do?"

The allegations against the Chamber, even as the administration tries to assure job-generating corporations that it is pro-business, appear to be part of a larger Democratic effort to alter the political dialogue in the closing weeks of the campaign.

Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has asked the IRS to investigate groups, such as the Chamber, that do political advertising. Also, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., has called for a Federal Election Commission probe into whether the Chamber is using foreign donations to influence domestic politics.

Also, the Democratic National Committee has released a new ad castigating the Chamber as "shills for big business." The ad depicts a thief snatching a woman's purse in a parking garage.

"They're stealing our democracy, spending millions from secret donors to elect Republicans to do their bidding in Congress," a narrator says in the ad. "It appears they've even taken secret foreign money to influence our elections."

The Wall Street Journal shot back in its lead editorial Monday: "Democrats are unleashing government power to silence their political opponents. Instead of piling on, the press corps ought to blow the whistle on this attempt to stifle political speech. This is one more liberal abuse of power that voters should consider as they had to the polls."

Republicans and business leaders are firing back as well.

Former White House Press Secretary and Fox News commentator Dana Perino tells Newsmax that Democrats are beginning to look desperate in the face of bad poll numbers.

"It sure isn't looking good," she says, "and it gets worse every day. And their desperation and [the] lashing out from the White House is — or should — be beneath them."

"Desperate, partisan attacks are a transparent attempt to distract voters from the issue America cares most about: job creation," wrote R. Bruce Josten, the Chamber's executive vice president for government affairs, on the Chamber website. "Now is not the time for political stunts, as the American people are rejecting politics as usual."

Obama himself appeared to back down somewhat Sunday at rally in Philadelphia, slamming Republicans for being beholden to moneyed interests while stopping short of alleging a violation of U.S. law.

But he did so by raising more questions about foreign influence in U.S. elections.

"They are being helped along this year by special interest groups that are spending unlimited amounts of money on attack ads . . . just attacking people without ever disclosing who's behind all these attack ads," Obama said of the GOP. "You don't know. 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."

The latest remarks of Axelrod and Obama appear designed to put the pressure on the Chamber and other pro-business campaign advertisers to reveal which companies are contributing to their ad campaigns. The Supreme Court's January ruling in the Citizens United case allows organizations such as trade associations to run independent advertising for or against candidates — even within 60 days of an election. The advertising can be paid for through anonymous donations.

Companies seek to keep their political activities anonymous to avoid boycotts by left-wing organizations that could hurt their businesses. When Target Corp. recently donated $150,000 of support to a group that ran advertising for Minnesota GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, MoveOn.org accused it of being anti-gay and started a boycott petition.
Some analysts say Obama and Democrats appear to be trying to shift the campaign's focus off of the president's policies and the dismal economy.



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