GOP Goes After Two Generally Sympathetic Talk Show Hosts (Joe Gandelman)
Joe Gandelman
What do you do when you have two generally sympathetic Los Angeles talk show hosts who adamantly differ with the UNOFFICIAL party line on immigration (the official party position is stronger than actual enforcement)?
What do you do when these two generally sympathetic hosts have been uncompromising on demanding that Washington impliment tough, no-nonsense immigration enforcement but otherwise are with you on many other issues? In fact, their station is known all over the country for its strong line-up of conservative talk show hosts, including Rush Limbaugh..
What if these two broadcasters had used their radio waves extensively to help your party dump California Governor Grey Davis by urging listeners to sign petitions, giving out websites where they could get the petitions signed — even emceeing rallies at which then-candidate-and-eventual Arnold Schwarzenneger appeared? What do you do about them if some news stories actually credited these talk shows with helping Schwarzenegger win?
What if they then broke on one issue — the need to have immigration policy enforced without any winks and turning the other way — and decided to make a "human political sacrifice" by picking (via a long series of progams, candidate interviews and website voting) a Republican for their listeners to help defeat — to send a message to party bigwigs to take as tough a stance on immigration in practice as is taken in campaign promises and campaign platforms?
What do you do if these two independent-minded, mega-rated talk show hosts generally backed your Presidential candidate on many issues and blasted the Democratic candidate?
And, especially, what do you do when what they're saying on the air in coming out against a Republican — a party that on many issues they support -- is exactly what talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Reagan say about John Kerry or what Al Franken and Randy Rhodes says about George Bush?
Easy decision: You go to the Federal Elections Commission and file a complaint against them — to basically shut them down.
And since it's a felony, if the talk show hosts are prosecuted and convicted, they can go to jail for being critical on the air.
(And you make sure the candidate who is impacted is not the one formally making the complaint so he can come back and say he isn't the one who did it).
Read about it all on this post here (make sure you go to the primary source the talk show host links).
Then read the latest news update here.
You can read the FEC complaint here (and have some numbers to contact if you think this is a dangerous precedent).Read this follow post from a second blog here.
PS: This talk show was flooded with phone calls on Friday by Republican listeners furious at their party and many are re-registering as independents. The two talk show hosts plan a big rally at the targetted Congressman's offices on Monday.(You can probably listen to it online) In the end, the targetted Republican will most certainly be re-elected but the party has hurt itself in the state. You'll note that the GOP candidate's opponent is enjoying this. She is GETTING this press due to the GOP's action. And she, unlike her opponent, has constantly accepted their invitations to appear in their show. KFI has monster listenership and is the country's top talk show station (Dr. Laura Schlesinger and Phil Hendrie spun their L.A. shows off into syndication from KFI, which also had a huge role in the Golden Age of Radio since it broadcast the Jack Benny Program). A B-I-G mistake since it'll just help boost station ratings and get tons of attention for the Democratic congressional candidate.
Clearly, if the FEC clamps down on them there will be a move to do the same by some in the cases of Rush, Sean, Hannity, Al and Randy....And, if laws are to be applied universally, rightfully so...
Our campaign finance laws are an absolute travesty. Every politician who supported them (including BOTH John Kerry and John Edwards as well as George Bush) should be excoriated. It's unconscienable, just unconscienable.
The Sinclair case was less obvious, unless they were going to add commercial breaks in the movie, where they would show 1-800- numbers to promote Bush's candidacy, or some such.
So it sounds like the GOP is accurately citing the law, in this case.
I will agree with you, completely, that it's a shit law, but maybe you should take that up with the folks in Congress who thought it was great idea? Couple o' guys named McCain and Feingold, if I recall; not to mention the goobers who voted for it.
I'd like to tattoo a copy of the first amendment on every one of these jerks' foreheads.
I still think he figured he could finesse the situation by signing the bill, then letting the Supreme Court overturn it. That way he avoids the heat of being the "president who opposed reform."
Whoopsie! The SCOTUS maintained M-F. Dammit. Yep, Dubya screwed the pooch on that one.
Nonetheless, stomping on speech is stomping on speech, and I'd like to see McCain-Feingold flushed down the toilet as soon as possible.