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This would have been such a wonderful response, but ever since the corporate Republican lobbyists of "D"LC, Inc. took over the Democratic Party, none of these things are answered anymore, and Democrats never fight back. I don't know why they didn't do this, or what they are waiting for; this would have been such a great way to completely shoot down DeVos's whole game. It could have been done, as you mentioned, very low-key and informative, like a teaching lesson about the way the Republican's campaign is--like one of Roosevelt's "Fireside Chats," intelligently explaining to you how this thing works, and why things are being done this way--going over each weird quote from the ad, and telling why it couldn't have happened, and why it was so off-base. As it is, I think they lost their chance--again--because I think the devil DeVos has a new commercial, which will probably go unanswered too.
To their credit, the Michigan Dems have been running a good ad on how Granholm recently attracted all those Google jobs to Ann Arbor, and there is one with Jeff Daniels and the Purple Rose Theater, on the Michigan Department that helps with small business loans and start-up help, etc. I also remember a while ago, an ad with Granholm, shortly after the Republican "Medicare" (insurance and pharmaceutical industry) Part D disaster, telling people that Michigan has a plan to help people who cannot afford it, with their prescription costs. They ought to run several like that--tell what Granholm and Michigan are actually doing, with the Departments named.
I happened to catch this commercial, and noted that several of the most bizarre quotes--"Phony," "Hokum" and "Demagoguery," (seriously, does anyone have a clue what any of those hysterics referred to, or did they just stupidly assume that the Granholm campaign would be attacking by then?)--all came from one single source, "Detroit Free Press, columnist, 6/30/06." Not only does that answer the calim that all of "the press" are making these calims againnst her, but people with longer memories will recall how the Free Press and the News merged under the Reagan Administration, brought in replacements during the strike of 1995, killed the union, and the short-lived Sunday Journal, and completely reorganized themselves, both, as third-rate, amateur, non-union rags.
She might also mention, as you did here during your reply #10, the rest of the quotes from these articles, for example from the original April 28 Skubick column, "And while on the subject of those DeVos ads, it's truly amazing that viewers have apparently been sucked in. The spots tell us very little about what he would do if he were actually elected," etc. Skubick has a long and embarrassing history of pestering Granholm like a teenager with a crush, asking silly "antagonistic" question after question that illumates nothing, then like a little prick with an unrequited infatuation, slanting everything against her. I was just hearing on a local station, Skubick attacking Granholm for working to get Detroit votes and a very important new endorsement from the Detroit Bishops' conference--she is "pandering," "alienating the suburbs by paying attention to Detroit," "what will she have to promise Detroiters," blah blah blah, those kinds of accusations--then in the next breath, praised DeVos, (who apparently now heads "Alticor," whatever the hell that is, just to cover up the AMWAY name we all know), for paying attention to Detroit rather than ignoring it, the way Engler did! She is attacked and DeVos praised--for the same thing! Of course, that is typical for Tim Suckdick.
I also recently caught a half-hour thing on a weekend afternoon, where DeVos appeared to be giving a speech to a roomful of people, and I waited for a question-and-answer session, finally, and some accountability. It went on and on and on, with oddly no sound of response from the "audience," and no change of camera angle at all, until I finally realized, it was yet another phony paid-for "infomercial" by DeVos, faking itself as contact with the public--just like Bush and Cheney!--and that it was in a closed-off studio dressed up like a public forum, and that there was no audience! Pathetic. Democrats should use clips from that, and ask why DeVos is hiding from the questions of unemployed people in Michigan, hurt by outsourced Amway jobs and the Republican pro-business life of eternal deregulation. Somebody on DU a while ago suggested a campaign slogan, "If You Like Bush, You'll Love DeVos," which would be perfect.
This whole DeVos ad was so strange and hateful, with what appeared to be these "specific" references to things Granholm had supposedly done--"Granholm's Negative Attacks Won't Create Jobs," etc.--that it should have been jumped on just because it made such a huge and easy target, just by going over it, bit by bit, on camera as you suggested. It would have been the ideal response, because it could not then have been characterized by DeVos as "negative." Granholm is still very popular, and her poll numbers always go up when there is actual contact from her. I do not understand the Michigan Democratic Party on this, and so many other things--are they that broke that they can't put on ads yet, or are they "D"LC, trying to lose?
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