{"id":12598,"date":"2010-08-12T12:44:49","date_gmt":"2010-08-12T17:44:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=12598"},"modified":"2014-10-05T14:38:04","modified_gmt":"2014-10-05T19:38:04","slug":"posturing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=12598","title":{"rendered":"Posturing"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a month in which groups paid for largely by his family and cronies ran more smear ads than were run in the entire 2006 governor’s race, Mark Dayton suddenly wants to play it clean<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Just a day after he declared victory in the DFL gubernatorial primary, former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton called for an end to all negative ads — including those from outside groups supporting him.<\/p>\n

“I mean it,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He doesn’t mean it.<\/p>\n

He’s posturing; trying to take the high road. \u00a0None of the groups supporting him (and paid for by him) are under the faintest obligation to obey.<\/p>\n

Most importantly, the unions – who control their own political spending and don’t take orders from Dayton, nudge nudge wink wink – can do anything they want, spend as much as they want, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it (but heaven forfend that a business might be able to do the same thing).<\/p>\n

Dayton is, at the very least, posturing. \u00a0At the most, perhaps, he might want to forestall future exposures of dirt in his record; the GOP’s “Erratic” ad is, truly, just the beginning.<\/p>\n

The call comes weeks after the Democrat-supporting Alliance for a Better Minnesota released an ad smacking Republican Tom Emmer for past drunk driving charges and a day after the Minnesota Republican Party smacked Dayton for his past Senate history.<\/p>\n

Minnesota has seen similar calls before — and seen absolutely nothing happen as a result.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And nothing will happen this time. \u00a0After months of paying for “independent” PACs to slime Emmer, Dayton’s current narrative is “I’m Being Swiftboated!”<\/a><\/p>\n

In October of 2008, Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman decided he would pull all his negative ads (they are no longer available on YouTube) and asked his supporters to follow suit. None of his supporters listened and they continued to rip Democrat Al Franken on the air. Franken ended up winning that Senate election by 312 votes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Unlike Dayton, Coleman was sincere.<\/p>\n

Michael Brodkorb, deputy chair of the Republican Party, said Dayton’s calls was hypocritical and the party would only consider pulling its ad after it had run as much as the Alliance ad had. Right now, it appears the GOP doesn’t have the funding to run it that often.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Given that unlike A4aBM’s largely fallacious spots the GOP’s commercials are true<\/em>, the spending gap may not tell the whole story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a month in which groups paid for largely by his family and cronies ran more smear ads than were run in the entire 2006 governor’s race, Mark Dayton suddenly wants to play it clean: Just a day after he declared victory in the DFL gubernatorial primary, former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton called for an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,79],"tags":[115],"class_list":["post-12598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-10","category-slander-files","tag-abm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12598"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12606,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12598\/revisions\/12606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}