Excerpted from the Midnight Oil

What do you do when you are a Congressional candidate ... your Presidential candidate is campaigning on the basis of Potemkin Energy policies like drilling for an extra 100,000 barrels of oil a day starting a decade from now (when a Saudi announcement of an extra 500,000 barrels later this year did not move prices by any discernable amount) ... and a gas tax holiday ...

... especially when in the last contentious Ohio State highway funding fight, you as the Republican voted for Governor Taft's gas tax hike, and your Democratic opponent voted against it?

Simple: you lie.

Well, of course, this is a Republican candidate for Congress we are talking about here ... you don't lie yourself, you have an "independent group" with a name like Freedom's Watch lie for you.

"The only thing new in the world is the history we don't know."

--President Harry Truman

BACKGROUND
About a week ago, I penned a couple of back-to-back diaries entitled: "2008's Grand Masters of GOP Dirty Tricks", and "A Preview Of GOP Racism In The Fall?" Please take a look at these if you haven't read them already, if for no other reason than the fact that they contain more than ample links to support everything I'm stating in this diary.

In those previous diaries, I reviewed how well-versed the folks running the 2008 GOP and 501(c)4-based neoconservative media strategies were at dirty tricks, general skullduggery and skirting the law (and sometimes breaking the law and then being jailed for their nefarious actions, too). However, what I've learned over the past few days is that there's actually a documented history of deep contempt over GOP campaign and election abuses, spanning many years, specifically between David Plouffe, Barack Obama's campaign manager, and the very folks running the show over for the GOP this year.  It's quite a story...

Comment from a New Jersey blog on convicted GOP felon, Allen Raymond,  author of "How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative."

"As for his three months in a Pennsylvania prison, he wrote: 'After 10 full years inside the GOP, 90 days among honest criminals wasn't really any great ordeal.' "

There's an outstanding piece about Adelson in the latest edition (June 30th, 2008 edition) of the New Yorker, "The Brass Ring. A multibillionaire's relentless quest for global influence," by Connie Bruck. It's a must read for all progressives serious about victory in November, too.

Voter suppression is real. It takes more money to turnout Democratic voters than it does for the Republicans to turn out theirs. (Ours are more likely to not vote because of voter suppression. Ours are more likely to need rides to the polls. Etc.)

Compared to the reach of insidious chain emails and the MSM, the reach of the progressive blogosphere, while growing, is small. To expand the reach of the progressive community, you need to communicate with friends, family and your community, particularly in swing states. Remember that not everyone has the internet, and amongst those who do, many do not use the internet like you do. Many use it only for email and news.  I attended an event recently where Peter Daou spoke, and he talked about some of Clinton’s donors who used a credit card online for the first time when they donated to her. Neither of my parents have ever read a political blog. They use it for some news, email and keeping tabs on their stocks.  

Quite frankly, Obama and progressives everywhere need to expand the reach of our message and donor base beyond the folks who use the internet the way you use it.

Remember this ratfuck bastard, Karl Rove? The one who outed a CIA agent, Valerie Plame? The one that helped George Bush hoodwink the American people in going to Iraq based upon lies about weapons of mass destruction?

Yep, that's the one gleefully posing with John McCain. He's behind a new 527 group called Freedom's Watch. Let me give you the low-down on Freedom's Watch:

Freedom's Watch

A major new 527 conservative advocacy group largely bankrolled by casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson. The donors for Freedom's Watch have raised $200 million for this election to help Republicans.

This bit of news last week alarmed me:

Progressive Media USA, the group organized to be the main soft-money advertising vehicle for Democrats in the fall, will dramatically scale back its efforts in deference to the wishes of the party's presumptive nominee.

I know everyone is marveling at the fundraising success that Obama, DCCC, DSCC, and Democrats down the ballot have had. (The DNC, however, could use some help.)

I know that some here would cast aspersions at the 527 and IE efforts on the Democratic side from 2004.  

But let me make one thing clear.

We NEED an independent expenditure ad effort on the Democratic side.

I'd already posted both of these over at The Thorn Papers, but thought perhaps the wider DKos community would like to see how some of the DCCC's big investment in the MS-01 race is being used.

Vids below the fold. We're gonna win this thing.

Congratulations to Congressman-elect Don Cazayoux, new Representative of Louisiana's 6th District, and to all who had a hand in his election. The Sixth District, which voted for Bush 55-43 in 2000 and 59-40 in 2004, will be represented by a Democrat for the first time since the Dixiecrat era.

This was a terrific win for the party, for a number of reasons. First, it is always exciting and inspiring to win an election in such strongly Republican territory. Only 15 Democratic Representatives out of 235 hail from more GOP-friendly districts than Louisiana's 6th, and taking another seat on such red turf is yet another indicator that Democrats are in the catbird seat heading into November. This is the second special-election victory in a former Republican stronghold within the span of three months, and it was nearly accompanied by another victory in the crimson First District of Mississippi (and may yet be, come the May 13 runoff).

We had no real business winning this district, but we managed to do so anyway, by running a candidate who was a good fit for the district, by wisely allocating national party resources to help that candidate compete, and by simply being lucky enough to face a genuine nutcase on the Republican side.

Needless to say, this is a major feather in the cap of the DCCC, and a terrific blow to our Republican counterparts. NRCC chairman Tom Cole must be losing his breakfast, especially on the heels of the loss in IL-14, and facing another possible loss in an even redder district (MS-01). On our side, the DCCC did a fine job; they fended off the combined forces of the NRCC, Freedom's Watch, and the Club for Growth, and came out on top.

The Club for Growth has been backing losing candidates for some time-they're far more interested, it seems, in having doctrinaire nutters on the Republican ticket than in actually winning a majority-but this is a particularly bad black eye for Freedom's Watch, a group which has already taken a lot of hits. Having targeted LA-06 as their first big experiment-apparently, backing Woody Jenkins was the first thing their leadership could agree on as a priority for this cycle-Freedom's Watch looks positively impotent. They were supposed to be the scary new kid on the block, the shadowy Republican hit squad doing all the GOP's dirty work this election cycle. But if they can't swing a special election in an R+6.5 district, they're going to have the devil's own time swinging the presidential election.

As reported, the GOP's strategy in this election was to tie Cazayoux to national Democrats like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. I should think that the results speak for themselves, and that they indicate that this strategy has failed. From the Wall Street Journal:

Don Cazayoux's victory against Woody Jenkins to represent Louisiana's Sixth District, a seat held by Republicans for decades, has further boosted Democrats' optimism heading in to the fall elections.

Not only were Democrats able to increase their majority in the House, but Mr. Cazayoux emerged the winner despite a multimillion-dollar national and local effort to nationalize the race by defining him as a liberal Democrat in lockstep with Mr. Obama.

At the very least, their efforts to demonize Cazayoux by linking him to Obama proved a double-edged sword. Although Woody Jenkins did outperform expectations in several areas of the district, and it's possible that that was due to the NRCC's attempts to link Cazayoux to Obama, it was certainly negated by increased black turnout in East Baton Rouge, which appears to have ultimately provided Cazayoux with his margin of victory. In other words, the GOP lost at least as much by alienating black voters as they may or may not have gained with these attacks.

DCCC chair Chris Van Hollen had a nice comment on these tired old Republican tactics:

"For the second time this cycle, Republicans were reminded that ‘all politics is local,’" said Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen , the DCCC chairman. Saying that "House Republicans tried to nationalize this election," Van Hollen stated that the GOP "used false and deceptive special interest smears and funneled nearly a million dollars into a district that Republicans held for more than three decades."

Van Hollen claimed that Cazayoux "won by focusing on the concerns of LA-06 voters — good paying jobs, affordable health care, and better education."

Demonizing the national Democrats is in no way going to be enough to win them this election. They went hard after Obama and Pelosi, as they have gone after Bill Clinton and Al Gore and Howard Dean and John Kerry and Hillary Clinton in the past. And they have nothing to show for it, except a humiliating loss in a former Republican stronghold.

If running against national Dems in a district where Kerry got 40% of the vote in 2004 isn't enough to save their crappy candidates, it won't be enough to save them anywhere. The GOP had better come up with something new if they want to start turning things around.

Unfortunately, according to Minority Leader John Boehner, they are counting on us to do their jobs for them. Essentially, the GOP is relying on the Democratic presidential battle to drive voters away from the party; they know very well they're cooked in downballot races if it does not. Their last hope for this cycle is that they can use national Democrats to sink the local candidates on the ballot, and the LA-06 results are a strong indicator that that won't work very well.

One final irony from this election is that the GOP loss can, in a sense, be thrown at the feet of one of the party's rising stars, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. For it was Jindal who backed Republican Jim Tucker to serve as Speaker of the Louisiana House, a decision which essentially gave Tucker the speakership despite a 53-50 advantage for Democrats in the House.

The Democratic candidate whom Jindal passed over was Don Cazayoux. It is likely that if Jindal had selected Cazayoux to serve as speaker, he would not have elected to run for the U.S. House, and Republicans might well still hold this seat.

Be careful what you wish for, Governor Jindal.

Race tracker wiki: LA-06

Tomorrow is special-election day in Louisiana's 1st and 6th Districts, and with a red-hot race in the 6th District favoring Democrat Don Cazayoux, the GOP is putting everything they can into avoiding an embarrassing loss in bright-red territory.

Republican Woody Jenkins has proven to be a drain on party resources; he's been a lousy fundraiser, and his controversial, David Duke-tinged past has forced outside groups-the NRCC, the Club for Growth, and the shadowy Freedom's Watch-to dump hundreds of thousands of dollars into a race in which they still trail by a large margin. In that sense, his candidacy is somewhat reminiscent of that of Jim Oberweis, another widely disliked perennial candidate who most recently lost election in Illinois' 14th District to Democrat Bill Foster.

Meanwhile, one seeming advantage for Republican Jenkins at the campaign’s outset — the fact that he was much better-known than Cazayoux — is a two-edged sword. Over the course of a 28-year tenure as Louisiana state legislator (1972-2000), Jenkins lost four statewide campaigns. Three of those bids were for the U.S. Senate, including a very close loss to Democrat Mary L. Landrieu in the 1996 general election, and one was for state elections commissioner. So while Jenkins can claim extensive political experience, it is difficult for him to portray himself as a political outsider at a time when many voters think that Congress and the Bush administration haven’t come close to solving the nation’s problems.

In fact, Jenkins has drawn comparisons to Oberweis, the dairy executive and frequent candidate who lost that Illinois special election in March. Oberweis had high negative ratings in part because he had waged three losing campaigns for statewide office, and it was hard for him to rehabilitate his image as a flawed candidate.

"Probably an additional factor in Louisiana is Woody Jenkins has been around a long time. This is the same thing we had to some degree with Oberweis," NRCC chief Cole admitted. "You get some scar tissue if you’re in politics and you make tough calls and tough decisions."

Unfortunately, Jenkins' proxies are running into their own troubles: a CBS affiliate in Baton Rouge pulled the Freedom's Watch ad from the air after the Cazayoux campaign correctly argued that it was false. Nicely done, watchers of freedom.

As Republicans always do, they have tried to divert attention from Jenkins (who is disliked) and Cazayoux (who is liked) by using Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi as their big bad liberal scarecrows. The new scarecrows are in wonderful company, of course, following in the proud footsteps of every prominent national Democrat before them. We'll see how well it works for them; the last poll showed Cazayoux leading by fully nine points, so it sure doesn't look like a world-beating issue.

We'll be covering the election results tomorrow evening. James L. at Swing State Project reports that yesterday the DCCC put an additional $267,000 into the race, bringing their total expenditures in the race to just under $1.2 million.

Their commitment to this race indicates that they're perfectly prepared to go toe-to-toe not only with the NRCC, but with their shadowy surrogates like Freedom's Watch and the Club for Growth. If we win, it will not only be a blow to the NRCC, but to the credibility of these groups as well. Freedom's Watch will have a hell of a time trying to swing the presidential election if they can't swing this one.

Let's hope that Sunday finds a punch-drunk Freedom's Watch licking their wounds and ruminating on how they can find a way to escape their irrelevance.

Race tracker wiki: LA-06

On May 3, voters in Louisiana’s 6th Congressional District can help America awaken from eight nightmarish years of Republican lunacy posing as leadership.  Here in the parishes along the Mississippi River near Baton Rouge, Democrat Don Cazayoux is in a special election against ultra-rightwing Republican Woody Jenkins, a quintessential George W. Bush clone, for a seat that has been held by Republican Richard Baker for 21 years (1987-2008).  The Democrat who is sworn in as our next President will need a strong majority in Congress:  he or she will not need people like Woody Jenkins sitting on the other side of the aisle.

Cross-posted on TPM

The latest news from the Don Cazayoux campaign: Democrat Cazayoux leads Republican Woody Jenkins in the race to succeed retiring Rep. Richard Baker in Louisiana's 6th District. From Roll Call (subscription only):

With almost three weeks to go before his special election in the 6th district, state Rep. Don Cazayoux (D) led former state Rep. Woody Jenkins (R) 49 percent to 42 percent, according to an internal poll released by Cazayoux’s campaign on Monday.

The poll of 500 likely special election voters was conducted by Anzalone Liszt Research April 8-10 and comes one week after Cazayoux released a March survey that showed him beating Jenkins 49 percent to 44 percent.

The GOP's own internal polling shows Cazayoux ahead as well, a rather remarkable situation for a R+6.5 district.

The Cook Political Report has moved their ranking of this race to "Leans Democratic". I think that is slightly optimistic-I'd call it a tossup at best-but it underscores the strength of Cazayoux's candidacy and his legitimate chance to win this seat and hold it.

If Cazayoux does manage to take the seat, he's in excellent position to hold it for the future. No incumbent Louisiana Representative from either party has been defeated by a member of the opposing party since 1890; every Louisiana seat which has changed hands in that time has been due either to retirement, or a successful primary challenge. That's bound to change sooner or later, especially as Louisiana is no longer a one-party state (as it was for most of the 20th century), but it's quite noteworthy nonetheless.

Naturally, the Republicans don't want to surrender a Republican seat (especially given the power of incumbency in Louisiana) without a fight. But with the NRCC barely treading water financially, and Jenkins' own fundraising dwarfed by Cazayoux's, they've been forced to call in the hit squad: Ari Fleischer's own Freedom's Watch.

Freedom’s Watch, a conservative advocacy group founded by former Bush administration officials last year, has bought advertising time on Baton Rouge television stations today – signaling a willingness for the upstart organization to help Congressional Republicans hang onto some of their more vulnerable seats.

The ad, scheduled to begin airing tomorrow, attacks state Rep. Don Cazayoux, the Democratic nominee running for former Rep. Richard Baker’s (R-La.) seat. Cazayoux is facing former GOP state Rep. Woody Jenkins in the May 3 special election.

The New York Times has some background on this happy gang of would-be Republicans saviors:

The conservative group Freedom’s Watch, headlined by two former senior White House officials, had been expected to be a deep-pocketed juggernaut in this year’s presidential election, heralded by supporters on the right as an aggressive counterweight to MoveOn.org, George Soros and the like.

But after a splashy debut last summer, in which it spent $15 million in a nationwide advertising blitz supporting President Bush’s troop escalation in Iraq, the group has been mostly quiet, beset by internal problems that have paralyzed it and raised questions about what kind of role, if any, it will actually play this fall.

Freedom's Watch does have some money to play with, so they could be something of a factor in this race. As the Times reports, they have had serious problems figuring out any plan of action thus far, so they've been pretty quiet.

It figures, though, that if they can unite around one candidate, Jenkins is that guy. He's the perfect Republican for the new era, equal parts Club for Growth and Focus on the Family. And needless to say, he has absolutely no intention of making government work for anyone:

In a Febuary 1995 speech delivered to the conservative group The Council for National Policy at Rancho Mirage, California, Jenkins advocated the abolition of the Departments of Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Energy and Education as well as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Legal Services Corporation.

"We want to do away with the programs, the bureaucrats and the cost of these agencies," Jenkins said.

A cursory review of the programs provided by the aforementioned departments provides a view of what Louisiana would have lacked in hurricane relief had Jenkins and his cohorts had their way before the first time we deemed him unfit to serve in national public office.

For example, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has provided tireless effort administering more than $11 billion in Community Development Block Grants. Their government Web site claims they are "helping thousands rebuild their homes and enabling communities to restore damaged public housing, promote affordable rental housing, and restore critical infrastructure."

You know, if we had just abolished HUD all those years ago, Katrina recovery would be so much easier now, right?

This is the Right's Chosen One, the one guy that Freedom's Watch can unite behind.

Race tracker wiki: LA-06

The NY Times today covers the ineffectiveness of a group run by former WH officials designed to bolster conservative causes and back President Bush. The press is so enamored of supposedly independent conservative extensions of the WH (without understanding that astroturf isn't grassroots) that they expected for example, Fred Thompson (remember him?) to have a huge internet presence, and that Bush's popularity would take more than a broder bounce to oblivion.

Bush Job Approval at 28%, Lowest of His Administration
Only Nixon and Truman have had lower job approval ratings

The problems of Freedom's Watch are the problems of the Republican Party. How this story should have been written:

The conservative group Freedom’s Watch [Republican Party], headlined by two former senior White House officials, had been expected to be a deep-pocketed juggernaut in this year’s presidential election, heralded by supporters on the right as an aggressive counterweight to MoveOn.org, George Soros and the like...

But after a splashy debut last summer, in which it spent $15 million in a nationwide advertising blitz supporting President Bush’s troop escalation in Iraq, the group [GOP] has been mostly quiet, beset by internal problems that have paralyzed it and raised questions about what kind of role, if any, it will actually play this fall...

Behind the scenes, however, Freedom’s Watch [the GOP] has been plagued by gridlock and infighting, leaving it struggling for direction, according to several Republican operatives familiar with the organization who were granted anonymity so they could be candid about the group’s problems.

This group is as independent of Bush as McCain and the rest of the GOP are... which is to say, not at all:

Q: "What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?"

  Mr. McCain: (Long pause) "Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy."

Can you say albatross?

In any case, don't forget Freedom's Watch can still do slime damage under the radar. It's more likely to go for negative impact, since there's so little positive for Republicans to run on. In so many ways, Freedom's Watch is a metaphor of the modern GOP.

The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy™ is revving up its media machine in response to news that Democrats intend to run a campaign for president against Republican John McCain. What gall! Unable to tolerate such impudence, Republicans, and their patrons in the press, are brewing a full-scale whine with a pungent aroma of fear and a nose for hypocrisy.

Brought to you by...
News Corpse
The Internet's Chronicle Of Media Decay.

Here in Nevada there is one race which will draw a significant amount of attention.  Jon Porter (a failed Republican Congressman) will once again be defending his seat in Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District.  Last cycle Porter barely hung on to his seat facing a first time candidate for any elected office.  Porter won by little under 4,000 votes in his race.  I know many folks here at Daily Kos watched a number of our great candidates lose by similar margins across the country.  This year it’s going to be different!

Remember Freedom's Watch?  The supposed conservative answer to MoveOn?  They ran some pro-Iraq War ads last year, and helped the GOP with some ads in the special election for OH-05.  Since then, however, they've been quiet.  They did nothing to help the GOP as Bill Foster won Dennis Hastert's seat in Illinois.  A couple weeks ago their President announced his resignation, the latest in a series of staff departures.  This week, however, Freedom's Watch announced a new hire: former National Republican Congressional Committee and Mitt Romney aide Carl Forti.

Forti's hiring should quiet some nerves among Republican strategists who saw Freedom's Watch as largely without a clear mission with just eight months until the 2008 general election. The departure of former president Brad Blakeman earlier this month was a clear sign of the discontent among donors and others affiliated with the group. (The group has not yet filled Blakeman's vacancy.)

[...]
Forti's hiring shows that Freedom's Watch is moving in a strong direction. But, in truth, there isn't much time left to organize a large and sophisticated soft-money venture.

Here's a nice taste of the kinds of ads NRCC ran during Forti's tenure:

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.

Since Freedom's Watch doesn't appear to be 100% financially prepared to run a huge television budget, it may not be able to disseminate slime at saturation level.  But remember, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth had a modest budget.

Furthermore, it costs very little money to employ one of the more insidious kinds of electoral dirty tricks: deceptive robocalls.  This is TPM the week before the 2006 election:

What we're seeing is an apparent coordinated effort from the NRCC -- the House GOP committee -- to place calls that appear to be from the local Democratic candidate and then automatically call the same number back as many as seven or eight times each time the caller hang-ups. If the caller listens to the whole message it goes on to bash the Democratic candidate. But if the caller hangs up prematurely, the computer calls right back. Hang-ups are the achilles heal of robo-calls. So this seems to be an attempt to cover for that weakness by making those who hang up think the Democratic candidate is basically harassing them with phone calls. The GOP wins either way.

Robocalls are dirt cheap: between 5 and 15 cents per call.  And they appeared to have swung some incredibly close elections to the GOP.  

When the Democrats filed complaints against the NRCC for not putting the legal disclaimer announcing who paid for the call at the beginning of the message, what was Forti's response?

"We comply with all federal laws and regulations regarding political phone calls."

Except when they don't.

Freedom's Watch may not end up with the same kind of cash that MoveOn gets from their (mostly small) donors.  They certainly won't have the hordes of committed activists.  But with folks like Forti in senior positions, expect them to figure out how to perpetrate dirty tricks on the cheap.    

I am not the best of writers, and I don't have the patience to do all the research needed to thoroughly educate and raise the awareness of all the Kossacks across the nation, but I want to try to start a conversation that goes a tad beyond the Democratic nomination.  I need help though.  This is where you come in.  

I want people to think about the bigger picture of the forces who are trying to influence the 2008 election (Presidential AND Congressional).  I see two disturbing trends.