Hours after the NRCC accused Democrats of trying to "steal" the election in which their candidate was actually leading, Rush Limbaugh took to the airwaves to claim that Murphy's lead was a "slam dunk loss for the Democrats". No, really.
After the break, Rush came back to the sea turtle story, then took another break, then came back to the sea turtle, but only briefly this time as his attention was quickly diverted to a matter of actual substantive importance -- the special election in NY-20. Rush declared Democrat Scott Murphy's narrow lead over Republican Jim Tedisco a "slam-dunk loss" for the Democrats, because it was the Democrats who invested heavily in the race and had Obama and Biden cutting ads (never mind that the GOP was also heavily invested in the race). More importantly, according to Rush, this was a failure of the Democratic strategy of bringing Limbaugh in, because, according to Limbaugh, the Democrats believed that invoking Limbaugh's name would bring them a landslide.
Satisfied with his analysis, Rush then turned to attacking the Politico for reporting that "a few things are clearer after Tuesday's contest, none of it welcome news to the Republican Party." Rush claimed the only reason the Democrats "pared down" Tedisco's double-digit lead in the polls was that they spent so much. Rush noted that the Politico reported that "even if Tedisco is ultimately declared the winner when all the votes are finally counted, the delayed result will have diminished any momentum that a clear-cut Election Night victory would have provided." According to Rush, this means that even if the Republican wins it doesn't count, and this is how the left does the scorecard. Remember that, moments earlier, Rush characterized as a "slam-dunk loss for the Democrats" a race in which the little-known Democrat erased a double-digit deficit to take a narrow lead in the initial vote count.
I'm sure that the irony of making the claim that anyone was trying to "steal" the seat once held by the leader of the infamous "Brooks Brothers Riot" was mostly lost on the recipients of the NRCC email, but Limbaugh absolutely knows what he's doing here. He's feeding outright falsehoods to his audience of halfwits and trying to create the impression that Democrats have already lost an election in which they currently lead. I'm sure this is just the beginning.
Liz is also reporting that the GOP is bringing out their big gun lawyers to fight this, including the man who got Libertarian Eric Sundwall knocked off the ballot, and counsel to the SRCC, John Ciampoli. Oh, and a state employee to boot.
In addition, Tedisco has a team of three local legal eagles working on his behalf: John Ciampoli, counsel to the state Senate Republican Campaign Committee; Schenectady attorney Jim Walsh, who worked for RACC when Charlie Nesbitt was minority leader; and Mike Cuevas, who is on Tedisco's state staff.
We simply can not allow the GOP to lawyer away a hard fought victory. Scott Murphy started with zero name recognition and a 21 point deficit, yet he is leading the vote count the day after the election. We aren't going to let them pull a Norm Coleman here, folks.
That's why I've launched a new ActBlue page. It's called Protect NY-20. You can help. Once again, I've set the goal in people, not dollars.
I'm not going to sit back and let anyone accuse the candidate in the lead of trying to "steal" anything. I'm not about to let ridiculous claims like Limbaugh's go unchallenged as he attempts to set a narrative that has no basis in fact. Enough.
How about you? |
