Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Astroturf Watch

Would you believe that a Republican member of the Maine House thinks Sen. Collins is "the candidate best able to address the profound challenges we face as a country"?

And would you believe that the Kennebec Journal would run his letter without identifying him as an elected Republican official?

Look, this doesn't even qualify as astroturfing anymore.

It's just Republicans spotting an opportunity--the failure of the Kennebec journal and other papers to exercise anything like control of their letters sections--and taking advantage of it.

At a certain point, the onus shifts to the Allen campaign: Either they need to make an issue of this practice or admit that they're content for Sen. Collins to receive a steady trickle of positive publicity in letters pages across the state.

Or they need to flood the papers with letters in the same way the Collins folks have.

3 comments:

Ed Lachowicz said...

Okay people. Seriously. Good noting what happened. BAD flooding the woman posting the editorials with angry phone calls.

Thanks to some of the readership here, I can't even put a call in to inquire about this without getting my head torn off.

Stop being insane. Thanks. I've posted a response to them and it WILL be printed.

mainefem said...

A paltry 0.21 seconds via Google to fact check Rep. H. Mark Cotta's "identity" and "independent" drivel, re: Collins?

Get real...get Maine.

Beyond sloppy, _KJ_.

mainefem said...

My error:

Rep. H. *David* Cotta (R-China).

Even Fish picked up on it (not exactly rocket science).