Ex-GOP Candidates Turn Attacks Back On National Repub Congressional Committee (GOP Eating Itself)

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http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/03/04/ex_gop_candidates_turn_attacks_back_on_national_panel/

Ex-GOP candidates turn attacks back on national panel
By Rick Klein, Globe Staff | March 4, 2007

WASHINGTON -- One advertisement accused the rival candidate of billing taxpayers for a call to a phone-sex line. One alleged that a candidate "fixed" his daughter's speeding tickets. Still others stated that a candidate endorsed a "coffee talk with the Taliban," and that another was supported by the Communist Party.

Each charge was misleading at best, demonstrably false at worst. Yet the National Republican Congressional Committee paid for each of those ads last year, and its leaders said they could do nothing to pull them, even after some of the Republicans whom the ads were designed to help demanded that they come down.

Now, four months after Republicans lost control of Congress, many of their former candidates are calling for major changes at the NRCC. They depict the committee as a rogue attack-ad shop that shielded party leaders from having to account for the claims in their ads -- encouraging over-the-top accusations that often hurt GOP candidates.

"They weren't just attacking my opponent -- they were, bit by bit, destroying a reputation that I had spent years and years building," said Ray Meier, a Republican candidate in upstate New York whose Democratic opponent was wrongly accused of making adult fantasy calls.

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