Senate Dems: Playing politics in the open and behind closed doors
By Tim Chapman
Dec 16 2005 09:53 AM
Behind the Scenes Partisanship
Recently, the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, spouted off with typical hateful anti-semitic rhetoric. On Wednesday, Dec. 14, Senator Rick Santorum attempted to pass a Senate resolution (PDF) condemning the hateful rhetoric and demanding an apology to all "Jewish and civilised people."
This sounds like a resolution the whole Senate could agree on, right?
Wrong.
Senate Democrats objected to the measure...but wait, there is more.
The next day, Dec. 15th, this press release appeared on the website of Bob Casey, Jr., the presumptive opponent of Santorum in 2006.
bobcaseyforpa.com
The release condemned the Iranian President's comments and it was initially stamped Dec. 15. Later, the campaign clumsily backdated the piece to Dec. 9th. (The campaign still, at 9:50 a.m. on Friday the 16 has not completely covered their tracks. Look at this list of his releases under "click here for more headlines" and you see the missive marked Dec. 15. But when you click it, it goes to Dec. 9th.)
bobcaseyforpa.com
According to one Senate aide familiar with the situation,
"It was obvious that there was collusion between Senate
Democratic Leadership and the Casey campaign. They
objected to Santorum's bill so that Casey could get out
in front and try to win over the Jewish vote."
UPDATE 10:00: Here are two screen captures of the Casey website documenting this. This pic shows the release dated Dec. 9th and this one shows it dated Dec. 15th.
townhall.com
townhall.com
UPDATE 2:30: It appears that the Casey team may read Capitol Report. They have now covered their tracks. Fortunately, we still have the screen shots above to prove it. If you go to his site now, he has timestamped both references to the release as December 15 -- that is after Santorum proposed his amendment -- instead of trying to get credit for for releasing it on December 9th.
bobcaseyforpa.com
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