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Americans for a Conservative Misdirection supports the Gang of 8

Americans for a Conservative Misdirection supports the Gang of 8

If the bill is so great, why does a liberal business group need to call itself conservative?

Versions of the ad below run endlessly on television and radio.

I can’t seem to escape them.

I even heard one of the ads at the break when Rush Limbaugh was interviewing Ted Cruz as to why Cruz was against the Gang of 8 bill.

It’s all a charade.  You are being manipulated by a group that has nothing to do with conservatism, Americans for a Conservative Direction.  The conservative part is window dressing, via Business Insider, Mark Zuckerberg’s Sneaky Trick To Get Conservatives To Back Immigration Reform:

It’s been less than two weeks since Mark Zuckerberg launched his new immigration lobbying group, but the Facebook CEO seems to have already gotten the hang of the political game.

Politico’s Alexander Burns reports that Zuckerberg’s new organization, FWD.us, is launching its first wave of television ads this week, under the auspices of a new subsidiary, Americans for a Conservative Direction, formed specifically to woo conservatives.

According to Burns, Zuckerberg has also brought on a fancy board of advisors to run Fwd.us’ conservative wing, including former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, and longtime Bush aide Sally Bradshaw, Dan Senor, and Joel Kaplan.

From the liberal FactCheck.org, Zuckerberg-backed Group Spins Immigration:

A group with ties to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hijacks the credibility of news organizations in a misleading ad that supports a bipartisan immigration overhaul bill. The ad, featuring Sen. Marco Rubio, attributes several quotes to media outlets, but the quotes come from opinion pieces written by backers of the immigration bill.

Rubio is shown talking about the bipartisan bill, which he and seven other senators — the so-called “Gang of Eight” — introduced on April 16. Periodically, quotes attributed to news organizations are shown on screen. Several quotes that support a conservative position are attributed to the Washington Post — “border security on steroids,” “bold” and “very conservative” — but those come from a conservative columnist’s opinion pieces, not, as the ad implies, the newspaper’s editorial board or straight news stories.

The group behind the ad, Americans for a Conservative Direction, is part of Zuckerberg’s FWD.us, a nonprofit group formed to back policies important to the technology sector, which the website identifies as “comprehensive immigration reform and education reform.”

This is a symptom of how the Gang of 8 bill is being portrayed as something it is not.

Here’s the Cruz interview mentioned above:

(added) FactCheck.org also points out the ads use misleading attributions of quotes:

It’s true that some conservatives do support the legislation — it was introduced by four Republicans and four Democrats, after all, and the Republicans backing Americans for a Conservative Direction clearly are behind it. But the ad uses an old tactic to mislead voters: passing off the words of opinion writers as if they were used by reporters or news organizations.

Several quotes shown on screen in the ad, and attributed to the Washington Post, were used in online columns by Jennifer Rubin, whose pieces run under the title “Right Turn,” with the tagline: “Jennifer Rubin’s take from a conservative perspective.” It’s not the newspaper that made these statements about the immigration bill, but a columnist who is in favor of it. In a January 13 piece, Rubin called Rubio’s initial outline of an immigration plan, which he had explained in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, “bold,” saying, “Now the challenge is to turn a bold proposal into action and legislation.” The ad simply shows on screen: ” ‘bold’ Washington Post, 1/13/2013.”

Similarly, the ad attributes the words “border security on steroids” to an April 16 Washington Post story. That was the headline on another Rubin piece — “Gang of 8 delivers border security on steroids” — in which she said, “The amount of detail on resources, metrics and timetables on border security is rather staggering. Unless the Dems plan to defy the law I don’t see how this isn’t a tremendous boost for the item that immigration reform opponents have been complaining about, a lack of border security.”

The words “very conservative,” which the ad also attributes to an April 16 Post article, are in another Rubin column, which says, “In essence, if you accept that you have to start somewhere and we have no capability to uproot 11 million people, this is a very conservative-friendly plan.”

The Post‘s editorial board does support the bill, but it did not use the words shown in the ad to describe the legislation. The paper’s editorial backing the immigration overhaul called it “sweeping,” “common sense” and “a milestone of pragmatism.” That’s not the same as saying it’s “very conservative” or “border security on steroids.”

Total misdirection.

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Comments

Marco Rubio is dead to me.

[…] state is that many are so beaten down, so unknowingly corrupt, so much what increasingly is termed the “uniparty” they do not even see what they do. It’s like women who have so internalized sexism and […]

SEIU has been running ads virtually non-stop on WLS-AM radio in Chicago blasting Illinois Senator Mark Kirk (R) for siding with “Tea Party extremists” (mentioned twice in 30 seconds) against immigration reform. Within the past few days, Kirk has come out in favor of the Gang of 8 bill if certain enforcement issues are resolved. Coincidence? Today, IL Sen. Durbin, Democrat and Gang of 8 member, praised Kirk for coming around to support the bill. When I tried to call the phone number in the SEIU ad, it rang and rang — no answer.
I’m not alone in hoping the SEIU ad backfires for selling past the sale and thuggishly smearing the Tea Party (how utterly typical), but I am disappointed that something — either the ad or other influence — got to Kirk.
By the way, the SEIU ads are running concurrently with the Americans for a Conservative Direction ads. Lots of money going down to push this amnesty deal. What is most disturbing and disappointing to me is that Rubio and Ryan let their names be used in this deceptive and misleading campaign. I’m not sure anymore who represents me in Washington – it sure isn’t the Republican Party, so I cant help but wonder just who they heck they think they are winning over?

    9thDistrictNeighbor in reply to spetrarca. | June 21, 2013 at 4:03 pm

    I heard the SEIU ad yesterday. I actually waited in my car to hear the entire ad after the “tea party extremist” line. I was actually surprised that Kirk cast a preliminary vote against amnesty; he’s a classic RINO who has gotten perhaps even mushier since he came back. I also think it odd that SEIU bought airtime on Rush’s program…surely they can’t think that the bulk of his audience wouldn’t see through their hard-sell.

    The laugh line for me in the “Conservative Direction” ad identifies “conservatives like Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan” I have to yell at the radio when I hear that.

I’ve always had a dislike for Zuckerberg as he has the appearance of a slippery character and this proves it.

That belief is one of the reasons I never became a Facebook user.

“They’re all around us,” folks! The enemy within…

    Observer in reply to GrumpyOne. | June 21, 2013 at 3:43 pm

    It’s more than an “appearance” of poor character. Read the story of how Zuckerberg was hired by some Harvard classmates (the Winklevoss brothers) to write some computer code for a project they’d developed — a social networking site. Zuckerberg agreed to keep the project secret; meanwhile he stole the idea and the layout for the site, and he repeatedly lied to his employers/classmates about the work he was supposed to be doing for them, while he was working on his own site and rushing to get it launched before his employers/classmates could find out that he’d been ripping them off. The Winklevoss brothers sued Zuckerberg (after Harvard refused to do anything), and eventually settled for millions. Zuckerberg’s site became Facebook, and he became a billionaire (with the idea he’d stolen).

    Now Zuckerberg is trying to scam Americans with more lies about “immigration reform” and his “conservative” organization. It would be foolish to underestimate him. He’s a very good liar. Something he has in common with his buddy Obama.

Stupidity of epic proportions….

…of those that have allowed themselves to be convinced amnesty is the way forward for the GOP…

And have forgotten who the left are…

And how Reid/Pelosi/Obama operate.

See what I did there?

I framed my entire post in terms of politics

I didn’t even realize it until I wrote it. I guess that happens when there is only one Ted Cruz.

One Ted Cruz to remind us all that policy should arise from the perspective of what’s good for the country, not the party.

Midwest Rhino | June 21, 2013 at 3:51 pm

Coulter points out, of Rubio’s dishonest “de facto amnesty” claim.

paraphrased (I think I added the shadows part)

“We have thousands of murderers that have not been caught, do they currently have “de facto amnesty”? So we should just grant them all real amnesty, because they already have “de facto amnesty”, and somehow real amnesty would serve us better, and so they can come out of the shadows?”

Ads need to run that expose this ad as uber liberal Zuckerberg’s dishonest propaganda. The bill would not withstand honest public scrutiny.

Notice that Zuckerberg had no difficulty whatsoever in obtaining tax-free status for his FWD,com – but those TEA Party “extremists” will never get a hearing at the IRS. I am sure that the original SEIU script called them that derogatory term that our president prefers.

Conservative Beaner | June 21, 2013 at 10:06 pm

Nothing new here. The Dems have been the leaders of deception for over two hundred years. Today they have most of the print and televised media on their side and the lies and deception have gotten bolder and more outrageous.

As usual, Politico is incorrect. The Zuckerberg fake conservative ads have been running a while already, they didn’t just start, only the frequency has increased.

It should hardly be surprising the left relies on outright lying to get their way. When have they ever used the truth?