As the Rocky Mountain News reports:
A Washington group launched ads Thursday attacking Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer over his 1999 trip to the Marianas Islands arranged by organizations with ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
“This issue will not go away until (Schaffer) truly apologizes for aiding Abramoff’s efforts to continue the deplorable conditions for exploited female workers in the Northern Marianas,” said David Donnelly, director of Campaign Money Watch.
The TV and radio ads will air in Colorado Springs over the next two weeks.
Schaffer’s campaign manager, Dick Wadhams, said Campaign Money Watch is a “sham” organization that is financed by “scumbags.”
Wadhams called on Campaign Money Watch to “return the hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of dollars it has received from convicted billionaire George Soros.”
“They should apologize for using tainted money for allegedly trying to reform the system,” Wadhams said.
Soros, who reportedly denied any wrongdoing, was convicted by a French court in an insider trading case dating to the late 1980s and was fined, according to a 2006 news report.
Wadhams also went after Schaffer’s opponent, U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, D-Eldorado Springs.
“If Boulder liberal Mark Udall wants his dirty work to be paid for by scumbags . . . that tells us everything we need to know about Boulder liberal Mark Udall,” Wadhams said.
Said Udall’s campaign spokeswoman, Taylor West: “If Abramoff crony Bob Schaffer thinks an organization of people committed to integrity in government are ‘scumbags,’ that tells us everything we need to know about Abramoff crony Bob Schaffer.”
Schaffer has said he never met Abramoff…
We don’t know about you, but every time we hear Dick Wadhams use the word “scumbag” we cringe. Just a little.
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The bully loses their ability to inspire fear. Wadhams strikes me as someone who has used bullying tactics to keep the press in line. And now enough reporters have ignored him and continued to report a story that it loses it’s impact.
With no fear he becomes pathetic.
Great line David. It should be a mantra against all the fascists in this country, including the current inhabitants of the WH. They’re all a pathetic bunch of fear and war mongerers.
The wheels are coming off the wagon. It must be galling that the IE groups are going straight at the geographic base of Colorado’s religious right. With a RINO presidential candidate and a values sellout for US Senate, why should a religious right voter even show up in November?
It really sounds like Wadhams is coming unhinged. This is good to see.
The quotation attributed to Mark Wadhams is wrong. It should read: “If Boulder liberal Mark Udall wants his dirty work to be paid for by scumbags, he should become a Republican and hire me.” Thanks, Dick.
Schaffer and his campaign employees are engaged in head long attempts to distract the public and the press away from the sweatshops and forced abortions on Saipan by throwing mud at everyone else, including Congressman Udall. It is already a failed strategy. Avoidance will not win the day for Schaffer or his campaign employees because the facts continue to stare them in the face, including the fact that Schaffer intentionally fought any attempts to stop these practices and thereby endorsed sweatshops, slave like working conditions, forced abortions and complete restrictions on freedom of religion within the boundaries of the United States of America. It doesn’t matter whether he ever met Abramoff. That is irrelevant. The fact he supported these conditions so others could make money is what is truly appalling and it undermines any moral high ground he has allegedly occupied in the past.
Schaffer and his campaign staff need to understand a few fundamental principles about the free market system. First, that system has created more wealth for more people than any other economic system the world has ever known. That is good. But the free market system is dedicated to creating wealth only. It does not consider other values that society as a whole may cherish.
Of course, there are examples of great philanthropic donations like Bill Gates’ to world health, but Mr. Gates’ donation was an act of individual philanthropy by a very successful American businessman. It was not motivated by the free market system itself. The system created the wealth but not the motivation. That came from within Mr. Gates and he should be honored for it.
Therefore, the free market is neither moral or immoral; it is primarily amoral. It focuses exclusively on creating wealth to the exclusion of other values which can, as we have seen in the sweatshops in Saipan, lead to what the majority of Americans consider, by any standards, immoral conduct.
The only entities in society with the public support and authority to force the free market system to consider and act according to other values, other than the creation of wealth, is the federal and state governments. Through our elected representatives we are able to impose other values on the free market system (e.g. environmental, labor and wages etc.).
What is most dismaying about Mr. Schaffer’s conduct is the fact we, as the American people, made sweatshops, slave like working conditions and forced conduct, like forced abortions, illegal decades or centuries ago. If fact, we made freedom of religion a basic premise of the Bill of Rights which was added to the U.S. Constitution in the late 18th century, over two hundred years ago. All of these values to honor and support individuals have been basic, I dare say, universally accepted American values since we can remember; and now we have Mr. Schaffer, a former congressman, who wants us to promote him to the United States Senate, supporting exactly the opposite values all for the economic benefit of a few people who owned the sweatshops. His conduct is not only shameful, it is immoral and a direct transgression of basic American values of decency.
Thanks for stating some fundamental truths so clearly and succinctly. Hats off!
Thanks for the clarity of your writing.
As a lifelong business owner I know the power of the free market. And that power without regulation and control results in Saipan, Gang Rape in Iraq of women with no legal protection ala KBR and deaths in the mines of Utah. The balance has moved way too far and we need to swing it back this fall.
Beautiful, eloquent, and spot-on.
Describes the proper roll of an effective public sector in regulating a robust, but ammoral, private sector that is at times at odds with our fundamental values as Americans.
that the members of the Church of Free Market Capitalism don’t get – that capitalism isn’t moral. That’s why regulation is needed. It shouldn’t go too far, and critics are needed to ensure that it doesn’t, but believing that laissez faire capitalism will regulate itself is as sensible as believing in the tooth fairy.
That was a nice line.
Is this all Dick’s got? Shifting the focus from Schaffer v Udall, to Abramoff v. Soros, doesn’t accomplish much. If that is what the voters go to the booth with, Soros wins every time.
Dick, Bob – don’t listen to these nay-sayers, you’re running an awesome campaign and are set to dominate in November. They’re just trying to derail your perfection.
It’s Dicky’s own fault for running a seriously flawed candidate and then making the mistake of letting him talk to press. Add to that the fact that the ’08 election may turn out to be even more toxic for Repubs than the ’06 election was.
Didn’t his experience with George “Macaca” Allen teach him anything?
…that little Dick would ever admit that mistakes were made in the Allen campaign.
“All the liberal media’s fault” (aided by some snotty nosed brown kid) is probably the company line on that.
He made a very weak attack the messenger defense and a very weak equivelance attack (Soros is a convicted billionaire kinda like Abramhoff is a convicted Lobbyiest)
Not good when you can not make any defense on the substance.
Do you think Wadhams considers Abramoff a “scumbag” just like he does Soros? Using his own logic, you’d have to presume so, wouldn’t you?
while Wadhams ran his campaign, you have to wonder.
anytime.
I loved that phrasing: “convicted billionaire.”