U.S. Chamber Of Commerce Lauds Reichert, Banks On Voter Senility

As both the Seattle Times and P-I are reporting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's latest national ad campaign in support of Republican lawmakers has had to be tweaked a tiny bit.

The P-I's coverage strikes us as more genuinely perturbed at the gross incompetence (or political "knavery" as they put it) involved:

This time, the chamber aired a TV commercial suggesting that freshman Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Wash., voted for an expansion of the Medicare prescription-drug program that passed before he was in Congress. Then the business lobby's political director, in an interview, misrepresented how extensively the chamber had to revise the ad once it got caught.

The Seattle-area ad initially claimed that Rep. Reichert supported a Medicare expansion that passed in 2003, when Reichert didn't actually take office until 2005. We can only assume that since the ad was targeted at Washington's 713,000 seniors, the assumption was that exactly when things happened could afford to be a little fuzzy.

This kind of "oops" was not just related to Washington's ads, either. Raw Story points out that:

The campaign earlier placed ads thanking Republicans Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA), and Mike Sodrel (R-IN) for helping pass the legislation. Neither of them were in office at the time the laws were considered. Sodrel stated in 2004 that he did not support the bill.

Another ad praised Steve Chabot (R-OH) for his support--even though he actually voted against the plan.

Bill Miller, the wunderkind in charge of the Chamber, is quoted as saying the only change was one of tense -- it wasn't. The phrase, "Thanks to Dave Reichert," had to be dropped as well. So an ad whose sole purpose was to pump Reichert's support of seniors by highlighting his support of the passage of Medicare Part D was, according to Miller, undamaged by the fact that Reichert had no part whatsoever in that passage. The only issue was one of "clarity."

If we were at all connected with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, we'd say the issue is one of Miller's pissing away $10 million on an ad campaign that's generating more publicity for its deceptiveness than anything else. We'd say the only issue of clarity was how clear it was that his incompetent ass was now going to be on the street looking for a new job.