Edwards Raising Cash Off Early Decision To Pull Out Of Fox Debate
The John Edwards campaign is quickly moving to raise campaign cash off of the fact that he was the first Dem to pull out of the Fox-hosted debate. Even as the news was breaking yesterday that Dems were nixing the debate, leaving it effectively dead, Edwards deputy campaign manager Jonathan Prince sent out a fundraising appeal late yesterday evening to contributors and supporters, reminding them that he'd been the first to jump. From the fundraising letter:
Dear XXXXXX: You may have heard by now that John Edwards was the first candidate to officially say no to the Fox News debate in Nevada—and because of the hard work of so many grassroots and netroots Democrats, news is breaking tonight that Fox is out.Fox has already started striking back at John for saying no. (There's a surprise—Fox attacking a Democrat.) Last night, Roger Ailes—the life-long Republican operative who is now Chairman of Fox News Channel—said that any candidate "who believes he can blacklist any news organization is making a terrible mistake" and "runs a real risk of losing the voters."...
The truth is, Fox News can "report" whatever they want. And when it works for us, we'll deal with them on our terms. But this campaign is about responsibility and accountability, and we need to send the message to Fox that if they want to be the corporate mouthpiece of the Republican Party more than they want to be an impartial news outlet, they shouldn't expect Democrats to play along.
You can send that message by contributing today, and remind Fox News that in this election, Democrats won't take their spin lying down...
Note the props Edwards gives to the netroots and the general let's-fight-back feistiness -- further evidence of his serious bid to be the netroots candidate. If you're interested, the full fundraising letter is after the jump.
Dear XXXXXX:You may have heard by now that John Edwards was the first candidate to officially say no to the Fox News debate in Nevada—and because of the hard work of so many grassroots and netroots Democrats, news is breaking tonight that Fox is out.
Fox has already started striking back at John for saying no. (There's a surprise—Fox attacking a Democrat.) Last night, Roger Ailes—the life-long Republican operative who is now Chairman of Fox News Channel—said that any candidate "who believes he can blacklist any news organization is making a terrible mistake" and "runs a real risk of losing the voters."
And John's not their only target. Tonight Fox News Vice President David Rhodes is telling news organizations not to get involved in the Nevada Democratic Caucus because of "radical fringe" groups—meaning grassroots Democrats (that would be you)—who objected to Fox's long history of spreading Republican propaganda at the expense of Democratic leaders.
The whole right wing is getting in on the attack; the Drudge Report is blaring the headline: "War! Dems Pull Out of Fox News Debate."
Enough is enough. It's time to send a clear message to Fox News and their allies that their right-wing talking points and temper tantrums won't go unchallenged anymore—when it comes to what Democrats should do in the Democratic primary, we'll decide—no matter what they report:
http://johnedwards.com/r/7157/10364/
Fox News has already proven they have no intention of providing "fair and balanced" coverage of any Democrat in this election.
In recent weeks they have run blatant lies about Senator Obama's background. And Fox was only too happy to give Ann Coulter a platform to spew more hate a few days after her bigoted attack on Senator Edwards and the gay community.
Now it's time for Democrats to stand together and send a clear message to Roger Ailes, Fox News and all the rest of them: bias isn't balance, but turning tables is fair:
http://johnedwards.com/r/7159/10364/
The truth is, Fox News can "report" whatever they want. And when it works for us, we'll deal with them on our terms. But this campaign is about responsibility and accountability, and we need to send the message to Fox that if they want to be the corporate mouthpiece of the Republican Party more than they want to be an impartial news outlet, they shouldn't expect Democrats to play along.
You can send that message by contributing today, and remind Fox News that in this election, Democrats won't take their spin lying down:
http://johnedwards.com/r/7161/10364/
Thank you for standing up for what we believe in.
Jonathan Prince
Deputy Campaign Manager
John Edwards for PresidentP.S. -- If the folks at Fox wonder why nobody thinks they play it straight, they should take a look at what Roger Ailes said about debates in 1988 when he was a top Republican spinmaster for then Vice President Bush: He told the Washington Post, "I don't know that we need to do more than one [debate]. There's no reason to think we'd need more than one." And he told the New York Times, "I don't think you learn anything about the issues" from debates. So please send Roger Ailes a message: Hypocrisy isn't fair and it isn't balanced; it's just hypocrisy—and we've had enough of it from you.
Bravo Edwards. It will now be more important than ever for him to fight back against the "Breck girl"
campaign the VRWC is mounting. Edward's defiance of Fox Noise demonstrated backbone.
I think Olbermann returns from vacation on Monday. It will be interesting to see Keith's reaction to the news.
March 10, 2007 11:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
He didn't have to ask. I sent him some money about 30 seconds after first reading here he'd pulled out.
Carrot, stick, carrot, stick...
March 10, 2007 11:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Whenever I see Fox News, whether at the health club or as excerpts on the Daily Show, it appears that they are more like the Fox News Club, with the rightwing blonde news bunnies and Steve Douchie having a good old time playing word games with Barack O's name. If you agree, you're in the club. The way they do it is mostly Rovian. Throw little bits of rotten meat out there for the audience to chew on, ridicule anyone not in the club, and raise back-of-the-mind doubts about candidates who are not republicans. They started early on Obama. Hillary has been a target since before the network was started.
March 10, 2007 12:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
"we need to send the message to Fox that if they want to be the corporate mouthpiece of the Republican Party more than they want to be an impartial news outlet, they shouldn't expect Democrats to play along.....You can send that message by contributing today, and remind Fox News that in this election, Democrats won't take their spin lying down..."
I want to send that message to Fox news. However, I am unable to see how sending a campaign contribution to Edwards sends that message.
March 10, 2007 1:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Made my first contribution of the season due to that letter. I think he deserves credit for being first to opt out of that debate, and for pushing economic justice issues harder than Obama and Clinton.
March 10, 2007 3:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Then, by all means, send a message to Fox News. If you don't want to contribute, don't. There are others, however, who will connect the dots and who will contribute.
What Edwards did was what all good Democrats should have done 10 seconds after the gentleman was the first to slap Faux Snooze up side its head. Frankly, Edwards deserves to benefit from demonstrating leadership and for doing what is only his latest ambitious, aggressive, and gutsy move. Edwards is not sticking his finger in the air and trying to find out how his reaction to the despicable Republican Ministry of Information (aka Faux Snooze) will play. He's leading, not following and, like any good candidate should, he's trying to get that information to his constituency and beyond. If you're supportive of his kind of aggressive candidacy for the nomination, then contribute to the effort. If you're only supportive of kicking Faux Snooze in the balls, then do that. But for chrissakes!!! Do something!
March 10, 2007 4:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
"There are others, however, who will connect the dots and who will contribute."
Is this code for you were unable to connect the dots also, or what?
March 10, 2007 4:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
I got one of those e-mails from the Edwards campaign, and I was less than impressed. I wish ALL of our candidates would stand up and take issue with things like chronic debt, states with chronic money problems due to mismanagement, maybe talk about the war issue, with an eye to ending it, but, let's fix our own house. I'm for seeing ALL our candidates trying their hand at brewing up a batch of 'farmers fuel', just so they can prove they've actually seen this fairly primitive technology work in ways that'll help us move toward national energy independence, which is the biggest problem we have today.
We rely on oil, and...you've probably already heard the rest of the speech.
Cause and effect, supply and demand, anyone says anything else is selling something....
March 11, 2007 4:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree. He is doing what we expect a Democratic Party candidate to do. Fight back. The Republicans are not backing down. Bush is taking his war and trying to shove it down our throats. Just the same as he has done with Social Security privitization, Katrina aid, global warming, managing news, controlling courts. These guys are not backing down at all. If anything they are showing their fascist colors a little more, all the time talking "bipartisanship". That is a game for the Broders and Liebermans. To stop their politics we need to turn every attack into an attack on Republicans; and any candidate worth crap better know this.
March 11, 2007 4:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Unfortunate choice of words:
How long will it be before O'Reilly/Hannity/Hume puffs out their chests, claiming that Fox doesn't work for anybody; that they are "fair and balanced", that they are standing up for the indpendent press, blah, blah, blah.
Just saying...
March 11, 2007 5:06 PM | Reply | Permalink