Perhaps Barletta Needs Some Cheese with His Whine
Lou Barletta, often referred to as “Sweet Lou” by his groupies for reasons that I am too horrified to imagine, is sounding a bit sour as of late. He and his campaign have sent letters to every local television station, demanding that they stop airing one of his opponent’s, Paul Kanjorski, campaign commercials. This is after he and his campaign manager were bragging about how Kanjorski putting up television commercials this early in the campaign was a good thing. Make up your mind, Lou.
Barletta and his people want the TV stations to stop airing the commercial because they say it is “false”. In the ad, which was paid for and produced by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), Barletta is portrayed as being in support of privatizing Social Security. This is because in the 2002 Congressional election, in which Barletta ran against Kanjorski and lost, Barletta was in support of privatizing Social Security. Barletta says that this isn’t true (it is) and that the commercial must go away.
The problem is, however, that the television stations don’t really care what Barletta wants or doesn’t want. As reported by the Scranton Times….
“Local television stations are under no obligation to stop airing a television commercial that attacks Republican congressional candidate Lou Barletta’s stance on Social Security, unless he can prove it defames him, an expert said Tuesday.
“To prove defamation is a pretty tall order,” said Kathleen Kirby, counsel for the Radio-Television News Directors Association, which advises stations on political advertising.”
It goes on to say…
“Dan Mecca, WOLF’s national sales director, said the station has aired the second ad for about a week and will continue to do so pending a review by its lawyer.
Ms. Kirby said decisions to stop airing political commercials are rare because federal law requires stations to air candidate-paid commercials and gives them immunity from lawsuits over the ads’ content. Stations will sometimes argue that immunity applies to non-candidate political committees, he said.”
So, simply put, the television stations have told Barletta and his minions to go pound sand. Perhaps Barletta and his joke-of-a-campaign-manager, Vince Galko, are beginning to understand what everyone else on the planet already knows: If your political opponent can afford to run television ads, and you can’t, that is a BAD thing. Not a good thing.
And Barletta’s response to these commercials is also very telling. Asking the television stations to stop airing them? Very mature, Lou. Maybe the next thing “Sweet Lou” can try is asking Paul Kanjorski to drop out of the race. Or ask the election officials to remove Kanjorski’s name from the ballat. Or something.
This is just another example of how bad of a candidate Lou Barletta really is and why he’s such an embarrassment to the Republican Party. He has shown a complete inability to raise money, thus killing his ability to compete with Kanjorski in any serious capacity. His campaign is being run by Vince Galko, who has a whole lot of experience in losing elections, but none at actually winning them. While Lou Barletta has managed to build up a fair amount of hype surrounding his candadicy, he hasn’t actually figured out how to live up to that hype. Lou Barletta should not be elected to the United States Congress.
-Dan Cheek
www.StopLouBarletta.com
StopLouBarletta@gmail.com
