[Cross posted at my own blog, Left in Lowell. The special election to replace Marty Meehan (D-MA) is on October 16th!! Please help if you can! We're in the fight of our lives...]
This sounds like standard Republican lying and fear-mongering - not to mention, smearing an opponent. And did I mention lying? [Link is to a Blue Mass Group posting about a very inflammatory anti-immigrant flyer sent by the Ogonowski campaign.]
Does anyone else think that the so-called "independent" "I'm-not-a-Bush-head" Ogonowski is getting a little direction on his campaign from somewhere else...like, the national Republican party hacks who made immigration their main focus in the last couple of years?
Nothing splits the Republican party but riles up the base like hatin' on undocumented workers, while beloved W. Bush, and before him, Ronald Reagan, among others, have taken the business-friendly stance of allowing a path to citizenship for the millions in this country who escaped poverty in their own lives by any means necessary in order to work hard and give their children a better future. Now, Bush and Reagan, like most conservatives, could care less that undocumented workers are exploited by corporations...but they prefer allowing them to stay because business plans depend on the source of labor, in particular for menial jobs that they don't want to pay much for. But the end result - a saner policy on immigration - is laudable.
Like Democratic hacks who claim being like Republicans wins elections (it doesn't, but it brings in large corporate donors), the Republican consultant class thinks they have a one-size-fits-all winner in demonizing a group of very vulnerable people and making them the scapegoats for all the personal troubles of their base.
We're supposed to believe that suddenly, immigration is the pressing issue here in the Merrimack Valley? No, I think this tactic is because of advice from afar, about 450 miles away to be exact, from the Washington D.C. Republican consultant class. And to link SCHIP to immigration (when in fact there is no link anyway) is an attempt to parry scrutiny over his recent reluctance to answer the damn question about overriding Bush's very unpopular SCHIP veto in the House.
Ogo's playing to his base...a base that would have voted for him anyway. This is red meat for them, to urge them to get their unmotivated butts to the polls on October 16th. I hope that even though MA-05 trends more conservative than most of Massachusetts, we can see through such horrible tactics, the lying, the hate, and the coverup, and send Niki Tsongas to Congress instead. Volunteer, or donate.