Romney Outrage: Paying People To Support Him?
BREAKING: HuffPo breaks a breaking story: Mitt Romneymay be paying people to walk around Iowa canvassing for him. Back in the bad old days of corrupt machine politics and ward-heelers and party bosses and other quaint terms, Democrats used to bribe immigrants and poor people into voting for them. Republicans hated this because their supporters were all in the suburbs, where it's much harder to walk around entire precincts.
NowMitt Romney is engaged in something cosmetically similar, according to Ethan Hova and Tom Edsall.
Romney is apparently paying religious conservatives for something sinister called "GOTV Consulting." "GOTV" stands for "get-out-the-vote" and it's just as undemocratic and anti-American as it sounds.
Since April, Romney has paid more than $200k to almost 70 individuals for this mysterious process. Payments went to people engaged in such bizarre activities as printing literature, phone-banking, and organizing student groups in support of Romney.
These practices were pioneered by George W. Bush in his 2004 campaign, when he paid people "consulting fees" for many of the same nefarious deeds. Bush, in turn, borrowed the tactic from Democrats, who'd been doing the exact same fucking thing since time immemorial but with unions and environmental groups instead of SCARY SCARY CHRISTIANS.
Photo courtesy of M.E. Sprengelmeyer, ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS
Romney Buys Conservatives [HuffPo]