{"id":490021,"date":"2010-03-30T14:55:46","date_gmt":"2010-03-30T18:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/?p=75878"},"modified":"2010-03-30T14:55:46","modified_gmt":"2010-03-30T18:55:46","slug":"ar-sen-lincoln-attacks-halter-look-for-newly-legal-corporate-ads-to-do-same","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/490021","title":{"rendered":"AR-Sen: Lincoln Attacks Halter; Look for Newly Legal Corporate Ads to Do Same"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Arkansas News columnist John Brummett has unkind words<\/a> for Blanche Lincoln’s latest slash-and-burn campaign against her primary opponent Bill Halter. In a series of mailers, Lincoln has attacked Halter for his service on the corporate board of Threshold Pharmaceuticals, which was sued by shareholders for providing misleading information on their products. Lincoln took this information to whisper-campaign heights with a mailer<\/a> that literally says Halter has a “prescription drug problem.”<\/p>\n

Brummett didn’t appreciate that line of attack.<\/p>\n

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This is the cynical demonization process that is part of a cancer on our politics. It\u2019s not enough to distinguish yourself from your opponent by performance and policy. You must delve into his past and overstate any association that might make him seem more than someone with whom you merely disagree, but someone who is a sinister threat, near-criminal.<\/p>\n

Halter was not directly complicit in any of those matters. He is guilty of bumps in the road of business life \u2014 of associations with human beings who were less than pristine. None of it bears on his stand on the issues. He does not run for the U.S. Senate to move your job to India and sell you drugs that don\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Blanche, actually, who has a public record that is obliging to multi-national corporations and drug companies. That doesn\u2019t make her a bad person. It makes her a bit of a Republican.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The most absurd part of Lincoln’s attack is that it came just a week or so after she attacked Halter for breaking his pledge to run a positive campaign – based on independent expenditure ads not coordinated with Halter, by law. After this dishonesty, Lincoln goes ahead and starts up a negative smear campaign herself. To quote her, “That didn’t take long.”<\/p>\n

But the real news in the Brummett piece comes here:<\/p>\n

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By the way, I\u2019m hearing that Arkansas corporate interests are talking among themselves about producing independent attack ads on Halter to counter the national labor assault on Lincoln. If these commercials occur, surely we can fully expect Lincoln to denounce them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Welcome to the post-Citizens United world. This is why the reforms proposed by Democrats on transparency and stand-by-your-ad disclosure are so vital, and likely to be opposed by Lincoln.<\/span> Because if corporate Arkansas would have to name themselves specifically on every ad coming to the defense of Blanche Lincoln, they’d simply be less effective means of shaping public opinion. I don’t know how the “Halter is a tool of corporate drug-makers” charge sticks when the biggest companies in the state mull over running ads on Lincoln’s behalf.<\/p>\n

Halter, for his part, released a new ad<\/a> yesterday presenting himself as a Senator who will “stand up to special interests.”<\/p>\n

\"Share <\/a>\n<\/p>\n


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Arkansas News columnist John Brummett has unkind words for Blanche Lincoln’s latest slash-and-burn campaign against her primary opponent Bill Halter. In a series of mailers, Lincoln has attacked Halter for his service on the corporate board of Threshold Pharmaceuticals, which was sued by shareholders for providing misleading information on their products. Lincoln took this information […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4406,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-490021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4406"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490021\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}