How Republicans and Tea Partiers Alike Used the Heritage Foundation's #AskObama Script
Yesterday, President Obama held a live chat session on Twitter. Billed as a "townhall," the President spent an hour fielding questions from Twitter users about the state of the nation. It was a magnificent stunt in which the greatest beneficiaries were Twitter itself and amateur comedians.
That doesn't mean nobody took it seriously. A day before the event, The Heritage Foundation, a tax exempt, 501c(3) nonpartisan "educational institution" whose goal is "to formulate and promote conservative public policies," published five Twitter questions to "put President Obama on the spot."
These five questions, gift-wrapped by Ericka Anderson, Heritage Foundation's senior digital communications associate and former communications director for Congressman Todd Rokita, were fascinating. And boy, did they get asked.
Your budget was rejected by Senate 97-0 & Dems haven’t produced budget in 700+ days. Where is your economic plan? #AskObama
You said your stimulus plan would keep unemployment below 8%. Do you agree that was a trillion dollars wasted? #AskObama
You said it wasn’t a good idea to raise taxes in a recession but that is all you offer now to fix debt. Why? #AskObama
You’ve added more costly regulations in 2yrs than any of your predecessors, who all reviewed. When will it stop? #AskObama
Gas prices are high. We’re losing 90m barrels of oil due to your moratorium, plus jobs. Why release 30m from SPR? #AskObama
Heritage implored readers to "follow suit, or tweet these."
As expected, conservative organizations did just what The Heritage Foundation asked. Americans for Tax Reform and the 60 Plus Association, tweeted the texts verbatim. Don Irvine, chairman of "Accuracy in Media," tweeted not just one or two, but nearly all five of Heritage's set ups.
Demonstrating just how little difference there is between the two when it comes to thought leadership, tea party organizations such as the Philadelphia Tea Party and mainstream GOP orgs such as Kansas Republican Party and the Arizona Legislative District 20 Republican Party, all tweeted the Heritage tweets as their own.
This influence of Heritage followed through when it came to the elected officials who used the foundation's pre-written tweets are their own.
An establishment Republican who once called the Tea Party "disruptive," Texas Rep. Bill Flores, tweeted:
Meanwhile, Tea Party Caucus member and North Carolina Rep. Sue Myrick asked:
Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL):
Rep. Todd Rokita (R-IN):
Rep. Larry Bucshon (R-IN):
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ):
Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC):
Jim Pfaff, Chief of Staff for Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS):
And then there was Utah Senator Orrin Hatch:
But maybe Hatch doesn't write his own tweets. Hatch's director of strategic communications, Jessica Fawson, tweeted from her personal account:
Fawson's resume lists her as a member of The Heritage Foundation.
Also doing what Heritage directed? Ed Morrissey, senior editor of one of the right's "leading news and commentary" blog Hot Air. Morrissey tweeted:
Hot Air's Associate Editor Tina Korbe joined in, not a surprise since she was once an "investigative journalist" for The Heritage Foundation. Before joining Hot Air, Morrissey also worked for the Heritage Foundation's Policy Blog. (It's noteworthy that Anderson, the author of the Heritage Twitter directions, used to blog for Town Hall, which acquired Hot Air in 2010.)
The extent to which elected politicians are taking direct talking points from The Heritage Foundation is hardly surprising given the Politico report from just a couple weeks ago that revealed the organization pays millions of dollars a year to the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. In exchange, in some cases, these conservative captains of ideology read scripts from Heritage as if they were the host's own words.
Speaking for Senator Hatch, Jessica Fawson was less than eager to answer questions about the tweets a day later. After offering an explanation about how the senator often "retweets" things, Fawson replied to a direct comparison of the Senator's tweets to the Heritage ones with an official statement: "The American people are asking the same types of questions that Senator Hatch asked of the President. These are the issues that Senator Hatch is focusing on in the United States Senate and as Ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee."
This seems to imply that Senator Hatch believes The Heritage Foundation is the same as the voice of the American people, a question Fawson chose not to answer. "We already answered your first questions," she told us.
Abe Sauer can be reached at abesauer at gmail dot com. He's also on Twitter.
Honestly, my first thought on this is "gee, it would be nice if Dems had this kind of message discipline."
@Kevin uhmm … they do. Have you seen http://mediamatters.org/ before?
@Mark Ewer So one liberal website = message discipline? Not to pick on you, but that's ridiculous. Being a long-time progressive I LONG for the day that Democrats have the sort of message discipline Republicans have. It would be nice if they agreed even amongst themselves, let alone a fervent wish that they would reliably echo progressive views. As opposed to the Right, where there is very little daylight between Republican politicians and right-wing blogs/radio hosts, it's mostly a matter of tone.
Your budget was rejected by Senate 97-0 & Dems haven't produced budget in 700+ days. Where is your economic plan?
I'm probably just an idiot, but what does this even mean:
"You’ve added more costly regulations in 2yrs than any of your predecessors, who all reviewed."
"who all reviewed"?
@sorry your heinous Maybe if you didn't get all your information from the liberal lamestream media, you'd have more of a clue.
@sorry your heinous: The right has no copy editors.
I guess I'm silly, but I don't really see the point of this article? So a bunch of Republicans retweeted or reposted stuff from the Heritage Foundation after they said "retweet or repost"?
@Katie Ritter@facebook It seems as if they did so without any indication of the original source. Call me old fashioned, but part of me still believes in citations, even if it's using retweet/post notation (RT, etc.) – but really, I would much rather them use the Chicago style (footnotes only, please. None of that in-text bullshit).
will see more question on obama
@fiona4aden sure does!
As soon as I read this, I began running around screaming and shrieking in complete and utter horror and disbelief.
OK, I didn't, because there's nothing shocking or any way unethical about anything they did. Many or most people in their Twitter circle will have known those were Heritage's suggested tweets. The only way this would be even slightly shady is if they were sent the tweets privately, which is not how things happened.
P.S. *Six days* before the event, I posted how to make it effective and my plan was something along Heritage's line. That failed, but if it had worked it would have held O accountable for once. Because it failed, I settled on just one question for O, which (naturally) I didn't get any help with. However, if it had been asked it would have put him on the spot much more than anything Heritage or others asked:
http://24ahead.com/n/10766
P.S. I'm not in any way a great fan of most of those listed.
Here.
@Immigration,Politics@twitter
I don't think the point here is that it was shocking, unethical, or even "shady." I think the point was that it was just really lame. I understand the role of institutions and communications systems in mobilizing people's voices, but if you feel strongly about something, can't you put it into your own words, even in a tweet? Especially if you're a member of Congress, and therefore supposedly educated and skilled at arguing your positions? It's not purely a snobbish or aesthetic criticism, I don't think–the laziness on display here and the verbatim repetition of the talking point questions seriously whitewashes the issues and makes it seem MORE like our political system is a standoff between two squadrons of robots. So, I don't think the author of this post imagines that he has caught either party in some big scandal, but rather just being lazy and displaying questionable commitment. Besides, Your budget was rejected by Senate 97-0 & Dems haven't produced budget in 700+ days. Where is your economic plan?
I'm not all that surprised that this kind of sh*t happens, since, after all, BOTH sides of the aisle are echo chambers, more or less. Don't Democratic members of Congress and liberal pundits like Cenk Uygur use talking points and 'reports' from Media Matters and/or Think Progress a lot??
However, what dismays me about this is that these Congressmen are so thickheaded that they can't think of ANY other questions ON THEIR OWN besides BS talking points from a right-wing think-tank. It's truly lazy and low-class.
And the fact that they have to get their talking points from various think-tanks that only represent a FRACTION of the populace, rather than doing actual research and forming their own solid, fact-based opinions, is even worse. Rather than do and propose what the American people WANT (like increasing taxes on the rich just a little bit to help pay off the deficit), these guys on the Right would rather go to the ridiculous Heritage Foundation to tell them what to think and say.
Btw, those last 2 questions make no sense at all. Is there even any PROOF that Obama has "issued more costly regulations than all your predecessors"??? I'm pretty sure that's definitely not true. Even if it WERE, so what. Wasn't it right-wingers and certain economists who essentially STARTED the cost-benefit 'revolution' in the bureaucracy and federal Cabinet?? The bureaucracy CANNOT implement a regulation without it first passing a cost-benefit analysis, which means the benefits outweigh the costs! There have been NUMEROUS executive orders and other presidential decisions passed since Jimmy Carter and/or Ford to require stringent cost-benefit analyses.
It's funny how Republicans totally ignore that and pretend like Obama and his regulators are just WANTONLY issuing new regulations left and right without any knowledge of the costs. Give it a rest, Republicans.
The oil question from Heritage is just plain stupid. They claim we're "losing" 90 million barrels of oil, but they ALSO b*tch about the fact that we're using 30 million barrels (which means we're actually "losing" only 60 million) from the SPR to offset those losses?? God, it's impossible to please these people if you're a Democrat!
What "jobs" have we lost thanks to the moratorium?? It sounds to me like they're using the whole, "This moratorium created less jobs than we thought" but reversing it semantically to make it sound like "increases in unemployment." Typical playing politics. And besides, huge increases in dirty oil-gathering jobs as the key to prosperity? No thanks
How about more alternative energy jobs and energy-efficiency?
@Brandon Broze@facebook Energy Jobs? Hahahahaha How bout you blow Obama and Hillary a few more times and shove a little sunshine up your clueless ass! What has Barry done right? What? Name one decision.
This b*tching from the Right about "overregulation" ALSO seems to ignore the fact that many regulations can actually INCREASE competition and/or innovation, at least as a side effect. And oftentimes the projected COSTS of those regulations are nowhere NEAR what they turn out to be! Big business and the regulators usually overestimate costs and underestimate benefits, for various reasons. Plus, trade associations like the Chamber of Commerce are so ideologically used to being opposed to almost EVERY new regulation that they and their member businesses rarely bother to actually see how exactly the regulation would benefit them.
The idea that new regulations COST every single business or industry the same amount is ludicrous! Some will bear less burden, and some may even benefit. Case in point: Environmental regulation. For the longest time, conservatives and pro-business ideologues have whined and moaned about the "cost" of these regulations. However, more often than NOT, the costs have been dramatically lower than expected, and the benefits were much higher. Plus, it actually gave stagnating businesses a real reason to innovate and sometimes make not only their products but the whole WAY they operate run more efficiently.
Antitrust regulation is another terrific case where regulation has oftentimes ENHANCED innovation and competition rather than hindered it. I mean, who's gonna argue that breaking up Standard Oil and AT&T DIDN'T increase competition, innovation and open up a world of new business opportunities and make consumers better off in the end? Sure, the Microsoft case was kind of bullsh*t (seriously, complaining about Internet Explorer and other trivial crap?), but much of the time, if not most, antitrust DOES play a necessary role.
Plus, regulations shouldn't simply be done with regard to how it will affect the regulated. If the overall benefits to society EXCEED the costs with little burden on the regulated, I'm game! That's fine. So WHAT if business will have to pay a little more to comply? If you're a huge corporation like McDonalds, you can more than afford it.
Of course, there is the issue of small businesses, and I agree that we should probably put exemptions or special rules to help THEM better meet those regulations, but the medium-sized and big businesses can surely deal with these costs. With innovation, they'll figure out better and more-efficient ways to deal with compliance and thus save money. The idea that businesses that are regulated will ALWAYS have to pay the same amount in compliance costs no matter what is perhaps the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Conservatives love to b*tch about how it's LIBERALS who "know nothing about economics", and to a small extent, I suppose that's true. HOWEVER, it is THEY who know nothing about economics in the real world. They base all their economic legislative decisions on stupid, arbitrary models and neoclassical/neoliberal theories that DON'T WORK (outside of their textbook fantasy worlds)!
In 99.9% of all cases, neoclassical and laissez-faire business policies FAIL horribly. One would think that's enough evidence to show that a mixed economy is necessary, but these Republicans STILL complain about "socialism" and 'overregulation' like we're gonna become the next Soviet Union. And there are certainly ZERO credible studies showing that the government spending a lot of GDP, in and of ITSELF, is "detrimental" to growth. NONE!
I'm not even gonna get into the supply-side BS, since we ALL know how big a failure that experiment was, I think.
@Brandon Broze@facebook http://youtu.be/v1U1Jzdghjk
@ObamasCunt Nice vid from the Charles Koch Foundation. Note that it blames the "last ten years" for our current problems. Maybe "cunt" isn't the exact vagina slang word your avatar needs.
@Abe Sauer Abe perhaps you need a good fist in the ass. The message is clear. Less government is better and happier life. Redistribution of wealth from the workers of society to the dregs only results in a life of shit for all. But then again you are one of the 'Elite'
@ObamasCunt Yes, I agree! Let's get government out of allowing people to put fists in each others' asses.
Barry was supposed to be Jesus Crist Superstar!What happened? All them homies and brothas in da hood were supposed to get free Obama money. Where da f0ck is my Obama money?
@ObamasCunt clearly you are neither a homey nor a brotha.
@Abe Sauer Abe perhaps you need a good fist in the ass. Or a little ass raping by George Soros or Rachel Maddow. The message is clear. Less government is better and happier life. Redistribution of wealth from the workers of society to the dregs only results in a life of shit for all. But then again you are one of the 'Elite'
@ObamasCunt I was on board with your comment at first, but then you delved into all this highbrow, financial stuff. You elites are all the same.
@ObamasCunt At least Rachel Maddow comments with her real name.
Wow. You'd think it would be hard to express stupidity, misinformation, racism, sexism, and homophobia in less than 200 words while also promoting various forms of forced anal penetration as the solution to our economic woes and political divisiveness, but some commenters are just that good.
Flashback to Nancy…oh yeah all those jobs. Obama and all you libs doing wonders for the economy. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/02/25/pelosi_health_reform_will_create_400000_jobs_almost_immediately.html