Nader Campaigns With Republican Money - Charge Campaigners With Republican Money...

With U.S. elections closing in, I switched to regular reading of some major pro-Democrat blogs 'inside the matrix'. As most posts now are about flooding on-line polls, some rumours, campaigns against detractors, non-issue dirt on these detractors, and promoting Democrat candidates, I have ambiguous feelings.

On one hand, it is encouraging to see that they learn to stand up to the Republican Machine - hitting hard conservative TV stations owner Sinclair by discouraging their advertisers, or swiftly tracking down the Republican connections of and multiple local troubles with a private voter registration firm. On the other hand, they act even more like freepers than I observed before, and it's all about the candidates and not the issues - I don't see how, as some Dean-ists promised, they would stop an elected Kerry from sinking deeper into the Iraq quagmire, or get him to adopt any progressive policy. (My prediction is that they will concentrate on defending him against Republican attacks.)

Now Nader-bashing didn't stop either - it reached bizarre levels. Inside-the-matrix pro-Democrat bloggers are hell-bent on trying to prove that the Nader campaign is orchestrated by the Republicans. But, as I followed successive revelations through pro-Kerry vs. pro-Nader blogs, the former consistently picked campaign contributors who also donate to, and donated more to, Democrats. Here, quoting from an article defending Nader, I will only present the most bizarre moment of this sorry tale:

An ad produced by the Nader haters at TheNaderFactor.com charge Nader with all but conspiring with the RNC to steal the election from Kerry. You should know that TheNaderFactor.com is a project of the National Progress Fund, a rag-tag team of major Democratic players, which, according to the IRS, received its single largest donation from corporate executive Bobby Savoie. (Savoie's company, Apogen Technologies, is a major contractor with several departments of the federal government, including the department of Homeland Security.) Savoie donated a generous $25,000 gift to the National Progress Fund one month after donating the same amount to the Republican National Committee. A month before that, he gave the RNC another $2,000 (his wife Lori gave equal amounts on the same days).

Here's the clincher. According to the New York Times, TheNaderFactor.com's television ad cost them $5,000 to produce and another $20,000 to run in New Mexico and Wisconsin, totaling $25,000 dollars, the exact same amount that corporate Republican Bobby Savoie donated. Could the Democrats really be so hypocritical as to charge Ralph Nader with financing his campaign with Republican money - with Republican money?

The same article also tells about more recent Democrat operations to get Nader off some state ballots. The tricks are as brazen as Catherine Harris's in Florida, in 2000. Some, yet again, involving law firms mostly donating to the RNC, Ken Starr's among them... And again for the bizarre moment:

Hand it to the Democrats to keep some costs down, though. A contractor they hired in Michigan to make phone calls to check the validity of our tens of thousands of signatures outsourced the work to India.