)
So this ladies and gentlemen is the GOP's latest attack on Senator Mary Landrieu (D. LA):
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/...
Nearly 30 senators staged an overnight debate on the Senate floor Monday night through Tuesday morning, trying to bring attention to what they say is a dire need to combat climate change with legislative action.
But Sen. Mary Landrieu, the new chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, was noticeably absent from the demonstration. The vulnerable Democrat faces re-election this fall in Louisiana, a state with large swaths of conservative voters.
And Republicans aren't letting her absence go unnoticed.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which aims to get Republicans elected to the Senate, put out a new web video Tuesday, hitting Landrieu for allowing the talk-a-thon to take place, despite her chairmanship. The video also argues the senator doesn't stand up enough for American energy.
"We're tired of waiting," the ad's narrator argues. A large spinning wheel–the kind typically seen as a website is loading–whirls on a black screen throughout the 30-second video, trying to convey a sense of impatience. - CNN, 3/11/14
Seriously? They're blaming Landrieu for not stopping a talk-a-thon from happening? Then again, this is the GOP we're talking about. The truth doesn't matter to them. They've been lying in their attack ads against Landrieu for a while now:
http://abcnews.go.com/...
)
A new political attack ad from the Koch brothers-funded group Americans for Prosperity calls on Louisianans to tell Sen. Mary Landrieu that Obamacare is hurting their families.
The ad shows a number of people, who appear to be Louisianans, opening their mail to find a letter stating that their health care policy has been cancelled because of the Affordable Care Act.
“Due to the Affordable Care Act, your monthly premium has increased,” a voice-over says in the ad as a man in a rural neighborhood opens a cancellation letter and looks at his young daughter standing next to him. “No longer covered, due to the Affordable Care Act.”
But the people in the emotion-evoking ad are not Louisianans at all; they are paid actors
Landrieu’s support for the Affordable Care Act is a major sticking point in what promises to be a tough reelection campaign for the three-term senator. And her campaign is taking issue with the ad, characterizing its use of actors as “misleading” and “low.”
“Hiring professional actors to impersonate Louisiana families is low even for the billionaire Koch brothers,” Friends of Mary Landrieu Campaign Manager Adam Sullivan told ABC News. “If the Koch brothers had even a shred of credibility before launching their latest misleading ad campaign against Sen. Landrieu, they’ve surely lost it now.” - ABC News, 2/12/14
Plus the Kochs and the GOP need to keep the focus on Landrieu so voters won't pay too much attention to her opponent's hypocrisy:
http://www.politico.com/...
As a state senator running for a U.S. House seat in 2008, Louisiana Republican Senate candidate Bill Cassidy argued passionately for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, calling it necessary to save the U.S. economy.
Running for reelection two years later, Cassidy took the opposite position, checking “no” on a voter guide question asking if he “supports taxpayer bailouts of the financial industry.”
Democrats are calling the shift by Cassidy and other Republican incumbents hypocritical, arguing that they backed TARP when the economy hung in the balance but decry government bailouts now that they’re up for election. On Tuesday, POLITICO reported that Matt Bevin, a tea party-backed challenger to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), also changed his position on the Troubled Asset Relief Program – he signed a document supporting it as an investor but has attacked the program during the campaign.
At an Oct. 13, 2008, debate, Cassidy said TARP “had problems, but having said that, sometimes you gotta accept problems for the greater good.” He added that bailing out Wall Street would help local small business owners get needed loans and protect retirees’ benefits.
Reached for comment Tuesday, Cassidy campaign spokesman John Cummins acknowledged the earlier comment but noted that Cassidy did not participate in the debate about the bank measure or cast a vote for it.
Democrats scoffed at that response.
“Mitch McConnell and the NRSC just embarrassingly spent the entire day trashing someone for doing exactly what Bill Cassidy did,” said Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesman Justin Barasky, “so Cassidy’s nonsensical explanation isn’t too surprising.” - Politico, 2/11/14
And they probably don't want voters in Louisiana to fixate on this crucial issue:
http://thehill.com/...
)
MoveOn and Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.) are locked in a fight over ObamaCare, billboards and free speech.
Louisiana's lieutenant governor has issued a cease-and-desist order to MoveOn, arguing the liberal group is improperly using Louisiana's "Pick your passion" tourism slogan to slam Jindal's refusal to accept an expansion of Medicaid.
The liberal group's billboard in Baton Rouge reads: “Louisiana! Pick your passion! But hope you don’t love your health. Gov. Jindal is denying Medicaid to 242,000 people.”
MoveOn has said the billboard is protected by the First Amendment’s free speech protections for parody and satire, and is refusing to take it down. The matter may have to be settled in court.
The liberal group said Monday it has purchased a five-figure ad buy in the state to run television ads that focus on the cease-and-desist letter.
“Why are Louisiana Republicans trying to take down this billboard?,” the narrator asks. “Maybe they don’t want you to know that when Gov. Jindal refused to expand Medicaid, he said no to more than $1.65 billion in federal funds and denied healthcare to 242,000 people.”
The clash comes as Medicaid expansion figures to play a prominent role in vulnerable Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-La.) reelection bid.
The issue is giving Landrieu a chance to run not only against her GOP opponent Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who opposes the extension, but against Jindall as well. She argues the expansion would close “the Jindal Gap.” - The Hill, 3/10/14
By the way, Landrieu has an interesting take on the recent special election in Florida:
http://atr.rollcall.com/...
Sen. Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., said Wednesday that she believes flood insurance legislation was the deciding factor in Tuesday’s special election in Florida, not health care.
Landrieu has championed the legislation in the Senate and, as CQ Roll Call reported previously, has her own political motivations for doing so, given her own tough re-election bid in 2014. But the Louisiana Democrat said Wednesday that House GOP leaders saw the importance of the issue in the Florida gulf district and pushed through a bill, which the Senate could take up as soon as this week, to its own political benefit.
“The Florida special election was more about flood insurance than it was about health insurance and I’m proud to have raised that issue because that district cares a lot about flood insurance,” Landrieu said. “That’s one of the reasons that the leadership in the House moved quickly on a flood insurance bill, because they knew that it could be very difficult for their Republican candidate to try to get here without having addressed the No. 1 concern of the people of that district, which is flood insurance.”
Both Republican winner David Jolly and defeated Democrat Alex Sink were forced to discuss their own flood insurance plans on the trail, as one of the counties in their district contains the nation’s highest number of homes facing flood insurance premium increases in the event Congress does not pass a legislative fix. - Roll Call, 3/12/14
Maybe she's right but who knows. But back to the talk-a-thon. It's ridiculous for the GOP to attack Landrieu on this issue. I admit, Landrieu is not my favorite Democrat when it comes to the environment but what do you expect from someone who comes from a big oil state. But I wish Landrieu would take her colleague, Senator Tim Kaine's (D. VA) advice:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/...
But Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat who did speak on the floor, said talking about climate change is a political winner overall.
"Virginia might be the best bellwether state in America now in terms of the match between the electorate and the national electorate. I know what Virginians think about climate change because I ran for the Senate in 2012 and we asked them," he said on MSNBC this morning.
"And overwhelmingly what Virginians think is this: The science that demonstrates the connection between human activity and climate change is real, we believe it, and we need to do something about it," Kaine added.
Landrieu, however, sits to the right of her caucus on energy and climate and is running for reelection in a state where Mitt Romney solidly beat President Obama in 2012. She has criticized EPA climate-change regulations.
Landrieu is chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. According to Roll Call, Landrieu said that while she wasn't taking part in the climate talk-fest, "I think what they're doing is helpful." - National Journal, 3/11/14
For me, winning this race is all about the Medicaid Expansion in a state like Louisiana that really needs it. That's why I want Landrieu to win this race because her and I see eye to eye on this issue. If you want to get involved or donate to Landrieu's re-election bid, you can do so here:
http://www.marylandrieu.com/