Even here in Arkansas, where it’s almost certainly going to go Romney and whoever your Republican congressperson is, we’ve been getting a lot of Republican campaign flyers. The one that bugs me the most is this one that comes from the Christian Coalition, which pretends to be impartial. You can read the flyer I got (PDF) or see the ones for your state. I was almost going to pit them, but I decided that us getting angry about this is pointless
Instead, I think we should create a counter-flyer that still hits on the issues (fundamentalist) Christians care about, but takes the bias the other direction. I’d do it myself, but I need help coming up with questions. Plus many of you guys are smarter than me, especially in this area.
Most of the questions on the original flyer aren’t so much misleading as they are cherry picked to make the Republican look good. So I need some of those for Democrats. But a few are truly misleading*, so I’m okay with a few of those, too. Examples that I’ve come up are “Plans to make abortion illegal” (something that’s usually an issue that hasn’t come up this time) and “Plans to make homosexual marriage illegal” (a misleading statement because no candidate wants to make marriage itself illegal, just the recognition by the state.)
I do also plan to make the current misleading ones not misleading. Examples: They say “Voluntary prayer in public schools and facilities,” which no one doesn’t support (although they claim “unknown” on the Democratic candidate). I say we point out that both support this. They say “Maintaining current federal law defining marriage as between 1 man and 1 woman,” which obviously isn’t the case, seeing as some states have allowed SSM, so I plan to convert it to “change.” They say “Vouchers that allow parents to choose private school for children” which implies that children won’t be able to attend private schools under Obama. I say we make it clear that they mean “paying” you to place your kid in private school or home school, and maybe throwing in the word entitled. Thus “Children are entitled to have their homeschooling or private school paid for.”
Okay, so maybe that last one is a bit misleading. I don’t care. I think one needs to fight fire with fire. If they think my flyer is misleading, I’ll just point out that theirs is, too.
So will you help me? I don’t care if the only people I can get to read it are my parents. I just need to fight the bias.
EDIT: one quick slight rant: They actually made me have to sign up to distribute the flyers in order to get the link. I just hope they like information from Anne O. Naunimus.
My point is that that is misleading, not untrue. Sure, it’s so defined, but it doesn’t stop same sex marriage being allowed by the states, unlike, say, how the Controlled Substances act means that marijuana is illegal even if the states allow it.
And sorry I haven’t gotten back to the thread before now. I saw the low turnout and just assumed that it fizzled. I tend to forget to come back to threads unless they remain popular.
But it does sound like you guys have some good ideas. It’s probably too late to do pamphlets, but I could at least post on Facebook. So far, my only posts on Facebook that are political were in response to other Democrats, so I don’t think I would have worn out my welcome.
If anyone else wants to help me, come on right ahead. And if you want to say that I’m stupid for wanting a biased pamphlet instead of an unbiased one, go ahead and explain why you think it’s a bad idea. I’m honestly surprised there wasn’t even a little bit of a debate there.
BTW, I think MfM’s statement could be summed up as: “Supports avowed atheist and her non-Biblical morals.” Sound good? I’m afraid of getting any more specific, as I believe some people have been convinced that Rand is Christian. Maybe I could fit in “put yourself before others”, but I’m not sure.