You know the campaign season is heated up when politicians resort to the age-old dishonest tactic of misquoting their opponents. Apparently, when the establishment cannot debate challengers on the substance, it instead debates straw men — misleading the American people and wasting everyone’s time.
Take the latest example of Nevada Democrat Congresswoman Dina Titus, whose campaign saw fit to pull out of context the quote of her opponent, Nevada State Senator Joe Heck.
Heck said, “”The role of Congress is not to create jobs, it is to set the conditions under which the private sector creates jobs.” So, government should get out of the way, and let the private sector do what it does best.
Heck continued, further confirming this point, “And you do that through a stable, fair, predictable tax base, you do that by not pursuing onerous regulations on small, medium and large businesses. And that is where we need to get back to, that limited government that sets the conditions for the private sector to thrive.”
But the only part of the full quote that survived the ad that the incumbent Congresswoman used was “The role of Congress is not to create jobs”. The clip stops there, and then the narrator says, “Sen. Heck doesn’t get it.”
Actually, he does. Heck wants government to lower taxes and repeal regulations that prevent businesses from expanding and creating more jobs. Congresswoman Titus, on the other hand, voted for the jobs-killing ObamaCare and the Waxman-Markey legislation capping carbon emissions and increasing energy prices.
Titus has doubled down on her quoting out of context, again saying of her opponent, “He says it’s not the responsibility of Congress to create jobs and I believe it’s very important for Congress to create jobs, especially when unemployment rates are so high.”
As if that was not enough, the ad said “Heck signed a pledge to protect tax loopholes giant corporations use to ship our jobs overseas,” citing an Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) pledge. Only, the ATR pledge has nothing to do with jobs being shipped overseas, it’s a pledge against raising taxes at all.
But the malicious campaign does not end there. As reported by the Las Vegas Review Journal, “The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees has spent about $700,000 on ads that recycle a dubious claim that says in the legislature Heck voted against a vaccine for cervical cancer and that he wants to privatize Social Security.”
Only, reports the Journal, it’s not true: “In reality Heck voted against a mandate requiring health insurance providers to cover a specific brand of vaccine against HPV, which can be a precursor to cervical cancer. And his Social Security plan involves a proposal to allow new enrollees to choose how their money is invested, while keeping employer contributions in the current system. The new enrollees could also keep their money in the current system if they wished.”
There’s no indication yet if the misleading claims against Heck will have any impact. But it does show the lengths the establishment will go to in order to keep a hold of power.
Robert Romano is the Senior Editor of Americans for Limited Government (ALG) News Bureau.
