Inveterate innovator Mark Zuckerberg continues to shake up the Beltway by carving out new frontiers of sleaze on the political advertising front. Here’s his immigration reform lobbying group’s ad for North Carolina Republican Renee Ellmers.
Basically, what we have here is 1) pro-amnesty Democrat Joe Green (the Zuck ex-roomie who runs his FWD.us) funding an ad that 2) seems to be from anti-amnesty conservatives, designed to 3) deceptively boost pro-amnesty Ellmers by portraying her as 4) the “no amnesty, period’ candidate. Bold!
In fact, Ellmers has explicitly come out in favor of legalization and a subsequent path to citizenship for currently undocumented immigrants.** (She’s being challenged in her primary by Frank Roche, who says he’ll “work to block the type of comprehensive immigration reform and amnesty for illegal immigrants being debated.” ***)
This is beyond an “astroturf” campaign, where business interests fund phony “grass roots” campaigns that agree with them. This is astrofraud, with business interests funding campaigns that seem to disagree with them (but actually don’t).When the Koch Brothers secretively bankroll a campaign, do they pretend to be Democrats and then boast about the liberal credentials of a candidate who has in fact pledged to be conservative? ( Buzzfeed‘s Ben Smith has made this point). If the Kochs used that kind of subterfuge to fight immigration amnesty, there might be an outcry! In reality, of course, the Kochs are pro-amnesty too.
The basic FWD.us vision seems to be that Zuckerberg and Green have so much money at their disposal that they can swoop in, adopt whatever fictive persona they want, and dupe anyone of any ideology into producing the outcome they want. Deus Ex Zuckina. It’s as if Green thinks he’s Christof (Ed Harris) in The Truman Show and we are all the manipulable Jim Carrey.
[Aren’t you also a Dem trying to push GOPs into voting for your candidate in their primary?-ed] Well, um, yes, but … but I actually oppose amnesty, and I’m pushing the candidate who’s on the anti-amnesty side. I’d be like Green if I pretended I was pro-amnesty and urged pro-amnesty voters to vote for Roche by leading them to think he favored the “path to citizenship” in the Senate immigration bill. …
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** –Ellmers went even further and embraced what is basically a work-based open-borders philosophy: “If an individual wants to come to this country to work … he should be allowed to do so. Our focus should be on his intent, not his circumstance.”
***–Yes, Roche could be more precise about what he’d be prepared to vote for.