Next month, Florida's 13th congressional district will hold a special election to fill the seat left vacant by the death of U.S. Representative Bill Young (R). The race, between former Florida CFO Alex Sink (D) and David Jolly (R), is a close one; and the National Republican Congressional Committee has introduced some new win-by-any-means tactics to their money raising efforts. As reported in yesterday's Tampa Bay Times, deception is their newest fundraising tool:
"Ray Bellamy said he wanted to make a political contribution to Alex Sink. A Google search landed him at http://contribute.sinkforcongress2014.com.
'It looked legitimate and had a smiling face of Sink and all the trappings of a legitimate site,' Bellamy, a doctor from Tallahassee who follows Florida politics, wrote in an email to the (Times).
What Bellamy overlooked was that the site is designed to raise money against Sink. "I failed to notice the smaller print: Under 'Alex Sink (for) Congress' was the sentence 'Make a contribution today to help defeat Alex Sink and candidates like her,' " he said.
After Mr. Bellamy had made his contribution, he was directed to a page on the NRCC's website thanking him for his help in defeating Democratic candidates."The National Journal, a well-regarded, weekly, non-partisan political magazine reported that this deceit is not an isolated Florida incident:
"The National Republican Congressional Committee proudly launched a faux campaign website for Democratic candidate Domenic Recchia this week...They even bought Google ads to direct New Yorkers to www.domenic-recchia.com, designed at first glance to look like it could be Recchia's own, down to the same yellow star replacing the dot in the 'i' of his last name."There is no firm count of the number of 2014 mid-term races where the NRCC is using this deceptive stunt, though Rebecca Leber, reporter and blogger for ThinkProgress, found six other instances where the same model is being used to raise funds for Republican candidates. Michael O'Brien of NBC News reported on a similar bogus site being used in the Arizona race against U.S. Representative Kyrsten Sinema (D).
The National Journal reported that election lawyers say these look-alike sites "may violate Federal Election Commission regulations for confusing the public." The NRCC, of course, insists that their bogus websites are "technically" legal. Mr. Bellamy's request for a refund for his Florida donation was initially declined. After the article was published in the Tampa Bay Times, the NRCC refunded his contribution and announced they will return contributions to anyone who feels they were deceived.
I love that the NRCC qualifies their tactics as "technically" legal, giving themselves some wiggle room on the probity scale. So speaketh the Republican Party, defender of truth, honesty and Christian values.
- Deceipt: the act or practice of deceiving; concealment or distortion of the truth for the purpose of misleading; duplicity; fraud; cheating
- Deceiver: to mislead by false appearance; to mislead or falsely persuade others
- Deception (synonyms): craftiness, crookery, cunning, dishonesty, duplicity, foxiness, guile
A final word:
- Revelations 12:9 ...that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world.
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