Chris Coons

2010 Right Wing Candidates Weekly Update 10/20

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Wednesday, 10/20/2010 9:28 am

Sharron Angle

Terrorism: Angle refuses to apologize to Canadian Ambassador who condemned Angle for saying that terrorists are crossing into the US from Canada (AP, 10/19).

Latinos: Says that Latino students, and herself, look Asian (NYDN, 10/19).

Ad: Claims that Harry Reid is in “the conga line” with Michelle Obama (Slate, 10/19).

Fundraising: Spent over $5 million on fundraising (Salon, 10/18).

Palin: MissesTea Party Express kickoff with Palin, who praises Angle and slams Reid (Nevada News Bureau, 10/18).

Ken Buck

Religious Right: Claims that homosexuality, “like alcoholism,” is a choice (KDVR, 10/19).

Poll: New data shows Buck losing lead, in dead heat with Bennet (HuffPo, 10/19).

Women: Stands by comparison of rape allegation to “buyers remorse (Daily Kos, 10/18).

Carly Fiorina

Religious Right: Courage Campaign asks Fiorina to refuse support from National Organization for Marriage in internet ad (YubaNet, 10/19).

Government: Can’t name spending programs she would cut (LA Times, 10/18).

Palin: Skips rally with Sarah Palin and Michael Steele (NYT, 10/17).

Experience: Fortune magazine exposes Fiorina’s failed record running Lucent Technology (Fortune, 10/15).

Ad: Boxer hits Fiorina for backing Palin, offshore drilling, and repeal of assault weapon ban (Boxer, 10/15).

Joe Miller

GOP: NRSC spends $162,000 on ads to help Miller (WaPo, 10/19).

Ethics: Admits he broke ethics rules while working for Fairbanks; judge set to rule on disclosing more information (ADN, 10/19).

Security: Miller’s security firm under investigation for arresting reporter (Alaska Dispatch, 10/19).

Immigration: Cites East Germany as a success in wall-building (Mediaite, 10/19).

Debate: Skips debate with McAdams and Murkowski (ADN, 10/18).

Christine O’Donnell

Constitution: Questions Separation of Church and State, stumped on the content of 14th and 16th Amendments (ThinkProgress, 10/19).

Taxes: Chris Coons claims that O’Donnell can’t prove assertion that the Democrat wants a $10,000 tax increase (News Journal, 10/19).

Media: Jeffrey Shaffer looks into “Christine O'Donnell and the rise of cable TV politics” (Christian Science Monitor, 10/19).

Rand Paul

Poll: Democratic poll shows Paul trailing Conway by 2% (WaPo, 10/19).

Debate: Heated debate with Jack Conway, might back out of next one (McClatchy, 10/18).

Religion: Conway ad on “Aqua Buddha” spurs debate on religion (NYT, 10/18).

Marco Rubio

Debate: Crist dubs Rubio an “extreme right-wing candidate” in debate (Miami Herald, 10/19).

Outside groups: American Crossroads spends big to back Rubio (The Ledger, 10/18).

Palin: Campaigns with Sarah Palin and Michael Steele on Saturday (Politico, 10/18).

Pat Toomey

Outside groups: Club for Growth, formerly led by Toomey, set to expand pro-Toomey ad campaign (Washington Independent, 10/19).

Tea Party: AP looks into how Toomey won backing from both the tea party and GOP establishment (AP, 10/19).

Poll: Loses lead, now in dead heat with Joe Sestak (LA Times, 10/19).

The GOP’s Desperate Smearing of Chris Coons

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Friday, 9/24/2010 1:05 pm

Having to defend a candidate like Christine O’Donnell is an exhausting task. Finding her bizarre beliefs and troubled financial history almost impossible to defend, the right-wing has moved to demonize her Democratic opponent Chris Coons.

On the face of it, the County Executive of New Castle County appears to be a talented, progressive Democrat.   Before he became involved in local politics, Coons has a long history in the non-profit field: he participated in relief work in Kenya, assisted the Protestant anti-apartheid South African Council of Churches, and in the US worked for the National Coalition for the Homeless and the “I Have a Dream” Foundation.

But according to conservative commentators, he is a crypto-Marxist boogieman who make “community organizers” look like Republicans!

Although he came to Amherst as a young Republican, his political views became more progressive, especially after his time in Kenya.  Coons’ Republican friends joked with him about becoming a “bearded Marxist,” and he included the joke in his college newspaper profile which he wrote as his Class’s Commencement Speaker: “My friends now joke that something about Kenya, maybe the strange diet, or the tropical sun, changed my personality; Africa to them seems a catalytic converter that takes in clean-shaven, clear-thinking Americans and sends back bearded Marxists.”

Of course innocuous sarcasm doesn’t stand a chance in the conservative echochamber: Sean Hannity on Fox News said that Coons “made some very anti-American statements, apologizing for America and calling himself a bearded Marxist,” and Glenn Beck called him a “staunch anti-capitalist.”

The American Spectator’s Jeffrey Lord took umbrage with the fact that Coons wrote about studying “under a Marxist professor at the University of Nairobi,” which effectively makes him a Marxist! Now back from Kenya (more than 20 years later), Coons is “determined to get to the Senate and be an agent of the Obama radical redistributionist agenda.” R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. also of The American Spectator finds suspicion in his “African sojourn” that made him into an anti-American Marxist. Tyrrell says that he “loves taxes” and “shows no scruples about keeping his hands off other people's property.”

Aaron Klein of WorldNetDaily claims that Coons “himself may have ties to Black Liberation Theology” and even discovered another “avowed Marxist” professor that Coons took a class with: Cornel West. Of course, West is one of the country’s most prominent philosophers and thinkers alive today, and studying under a professor does not make you bound to his or her views. Yet none of this makes a difference for right-wing smear artists.

With the GOP’s radical candidate Christine O’Donnell trailing Coons by wide margins in all of the recent polls, is it any wonder that they are now using jokes to disingenuously discredit her opponent?

2010 Right Wing Candidates Weekly Update 9/22

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Wednesday, 9/22/2010 10:20 am

Your update on the right-wing candidates running for US Senate for 9/15-9/22.

Sharron Angle

Radical Right: Speaks at John Birch Society and Oath Keepers-sponsored event in Utah, describes crowd as “mainstream America” (Salt Lake Tribune, 9/20).

Tea Party: Planned Las Vegas convention featuring Angle quietly cancelled (TPM, 9/20).

Health Care: Claims that pre-existing conditions coverage can be “addressed very well by the free market” (Huffington Post, 9/21).

Poll: Fox News poll shows Angle and Reid running neck-and-neck (Washington Times, 9/21).

Ken Buck

Ads: New Democratic ads hit Buck over the 17th Amendment and reproductive health (CNN, 9/21).

Civil Rights: Left-leaning group holds rally protesting Buck’s views on contraception and choice (Denver Westward, 9/21).

Economy: Favors extending all of the Bush tax cuts (Colorado Independent, 9/17).

Carly Fiorina

Poll: New poll shows Fiorina trailing Boxer by 8% (Public Policy Polling, 9/21).

Ad: Boxer blasts Fiorina’s performance as CEO of HP (Daily Kos, 9/18).

Tea Party: Wins endorsement from Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks PAC (WaPo, 9/21).

Economy: Supports extending tax cuts for the wealthy (AP, 9/20).

Campaign: WSJ profiles Fiorina’s focus on the San Joaquin Valley (WSJ, 9/21).

Joe Miller

Government: Big-Government critic received farm subsidies (AP, 9/21).

GOP: Knocks Murkowski for running as a write-in candidate (CNN, 9/21).

Poll: Rasmussen poll shows Miller leading with 42% (Rasmussen, 9/21).

Economy: Changes position on unemployment benefits after criticism (ThinkProgress, 9/21).

Tea Party: Receives endorsement from Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks PAC (Business Wire, 9/20).

Christine O’Donnell

Campaign: Used $20,000 of campaign money to pay rent for house and served as her own campaign’s treasurer (Christian Science Monitor, 9/21).

Religious Right: Journalist unearths 2008 comment where she called homosexuality an “identity disorder” (ABC News, 9/20).

Poll: Fox News poll shows Chris Coons leader 54-39% (Fox News, 9/21).

Bewitched: Reactions to “dabbled into witchcraft” comment vary (Yahoo News, 9/20).

Ad: DSCC slams O’Donnell in new ad on finances (DSCC, 9/17).

Rand Paul

Government: AFL-CIO mailer condemns Paul’s views on Social Security, workplace safety (Politico, 9/20).

Media: Criticized by journalists for not speaking to press about views (WHAS, 9/20).

Palin: Sarah Palin fundraises with Paul and joins him for Fox Business interview (Mediaite, 9/18).

Education: Knocked for supporting Dept. of Education’s elimination (McClatchy, 9/21).

Dino Rossi

Economy: Stimulus-critic Rossi visits shipyard that benefited from Stimulus funding (Seattle Times, 9/17).

Government: Rossi hammered for views on government subsidies for refueling tanker competition (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 9/21).

Poll: Patty Murray leads Rossi by 5% in new poll (Rasmussen Reprots, 9/16).

Immigration: Opposes both a path for citizenship and deportation of illegal immigrants in the US, offers no alternatives (Seattle Times, 9/20).

Marco Rubio

Tea Party: Speaks to “Forward with the Constitution Rally” in St. Augustine (St. Petersburg Times, 9/19).

Ad: Crist disparages Rubio for earmarks in new ad (TPM, 9/20).

Pat Toomey

Fundraiser: Scott Brown (R-MA) to fundraise in Philadelphia for Toomey (Boston Globe, 9/21).

Poll: Leads Joe Sestak 48-40% in Fox News poll, 50-43% according to Quinnipiac (PA2010, 9/21).

Economy: Signs pledge to back Estate Tax repeal (CBS21, 9/20).

Wall Street: Ties to Wall Street banks come under scrutiny (LA Times, 9/17).

Syndicate content

Chris Coons Posts Archive

2010 Right Wing Candidates Weekly Update 10/20
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Wednesday 10/20/2010, 9:28am
Sharron Angle Terrorism: Angle refuses to apologize to Canadian Ambassador who condemned Angle for saying that terrorists are crossing into the US from Canada (AP, 10/19). Latinos: Says that Latino students, and herself, look Asian (NYDN, 10/19). Ad: Claims that Harry Reid is in “the conga line” with Michelle Obama (Slate, 10/19). Fundraising: Spent over $5 million on fundraising (Salon, 10/18). Palin: MissesTea Party Express kickoff with Palin, who praises Angle and slams Reid (Nevada News Bureau, 10/18). Ken Buck Religious Right: Claims that homosexuality, “... MORE >
The GOP’s Desperate Smearing of Chris Coons
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Friday 09/24/2010, 1:05pm
Having to defend a candidate like Christine O’Donnell is an exhausting task. Finding her bizarre beliefs and troubled financial history almost impossible to defend, the right-wing has moved to demonize her Democratic opponent Chris Coons. On the face of it, the County Executive of New Castle County appears to be a talented, progressive Democrat.   Before he became involved in local politics, Coons has a long history in the non-profit field: he participated in relief work in Kenya, assisted the Protestant anti-apartheid South African Council of Churches, and in the US worked for... MORE >
2010 Right Wing Candidates Weekly Update 9/22
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Wednesday 09/22/2010, 10:20am
Your update on the right-wing candidates running for US Senate for 9/15-9/22. Sharron Angle Radical Right: Speaks at John Birch Society and Oath Keepers-sponsored event in Utah, describes crowd as “mainstream America” (Salt Lake Tribune, 9/20). Tea Party: Planned Las Vegas convention featuring Angle quietly cancelled (TPM, 9/20). Health Care: Claims that pre-existing conditions coverage can be “addressed very well by the free market” (Huffington Post, 9/21). Poll: Fox News poll shows Angle and Reid running neck-and-neck (Washington Times, 9/21). Ken Buck... MORE >