With the economy tattered and the unemployment rate near record high, Americans are fearful about their future. Polls have predicted that the Democrats, the ruling party, will lose a large number of seats in both the House and the Senate.
According to a New York Times report on October 10, 2010:
With many Americans seized by anxiety about the country’s economic decline, candidates from both political parties have suddenly found a new villain to run against: China.
One ad for an Ohio congressman, Zack Space, accuses his Republican opponent, Bob Gibbs, of supporting free-trade policies that sent Ohioans’ jobs to China. As a giant dragon appears on the screen, the narrator sarcastically thanks the Republican: "As they say in China, xie xie Mr. Gibbs!"
In an ad featuring Chinese music and a photo of Chairman Mao, Spike Maynard, a Republican challenger in West Virginia, charges that Representative Nick Rahall supported a bill creating wind-turbine jobs in China.
And on Wednesday, Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, began showing an ad that wove pictures of Chinese factory workers with criticism that Republican Sharron Angle was "a foreign worker’s best friend" for supporting corporate tax breaks that led to outsourcing to China and India.
It is no accident that Democrats, in particular, have been eying China as a line of attack. This spring, national Democrats, including the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, began to encourage candidates to highlight the issue after reviewing internal polling that suggested voters strongly favored eliminating tax breaks for companies that do business in China. The party first began emphasizing the issue in a special election for a Pennsylvania House seat in May, said Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Adam Hanft writing for Salon.com on October 12, 2010:
And then there’s the Pennsylvania Senate race.
Republican Pat Toomey is leading Joe Sestak by around 9 points – and the clearly frustrated Democrats are coming close to making Toomey sound like a double agent.
This spot – which comes from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee – blasts Toomey for not just sending jobs to China, but for moving to China "...to work for a Hong Kong billionaire who wanted to help the Chinese economy."
The last line drips with desperation; it doesn’t merely question Toomey’s politics, it questions his patriotism. And mind you, it’s from the party itself, not a rogue candidate:
"Job killer Pat Toomey. Maybe he ought to run for Senate – in China."
Halloween is approaching, and that sure feels like the ghost of Joe McCarthy. It’s hard to see how the Democrats can get all hot, bothered and huffy when the Tea Party calls President Obama a socialist, if they’re calling Toomey a Commie sympathizer.
According to a statement from DSCC:
A new report today from The Washington Post reveals that Wall Street derivatives pioneer Pat Toomey spent a year working in Hong Kong in 1991, doing research on capital market formation for a company owned by the controversial billionaire financier Ronnie Chan.
Note that in 1991, Hong Kong was still a British colony and Ronnie Chan was an ethnic Chinese Hong Kong resident---and presumably---a British citizen at the time. He is a Chinese-American, a U.S. citizen.
Reading the DSCC statement and watching the commercial, you may come away that Ronnie Chan is this greedy Chinese commie who aims to corrupt the American system. This is simply not true. Ronnie Chan, a 1976 MBA graduate of the USC Marshall School of Business, is a trustee of the University of Southern California. According to his biography at the USC website:
Mr. Chan is involved in many educational endeavors. He is a Council member of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; a Trustee of the University of Southern California; and a Governing Board member of the Indian School of Business. He serves on the International Advisory Council of the Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, The President's Council on International Activities at Yale University, and the International Advisory Board of the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at Waseda University.
(A more detailed and updated biography can be found here.) Mr. Chan received the Asa V. Call Achievement Award, USC’s highest alumni honor, in 2009:
Of the selection, USC President Steven B. Sample said, "The university, and I personally, rely on Ronnie Chan’s guidance in so many ways, but especially as we build USC’s reach and presence around the Pacific Rim. He is an energetic, forward-looking trustee who more than deserves this recognition reserved for illustrious alumni."
What does DSCC's Pat Toomey ad try to imply? Working for an ethnic Chinese is disloyal to America? This is bigotry, this is racist, and this is McCarthyism at its height.
Democrats are playing with fire: by appealing to the basest of human nature, they are antagonizing a large block of their own constituents: Asian Americans. And they are abandoning their long-held principles.
It was wrong for Joe Lieberman to question the patriotism of those who opposed the Iraq War.
It was wrong for Arlen Specter to use Joe Sestak's discharge from the military as a campaign issue. It backfired badly.
It is equally wrong for Joe Sestak and DSCC to use Pat Toomey's Hong Kong employment to question Toomey's loyalty to America.