I don’t like using the word, but may I say “Ditto?” to this?
[Connecticut] Sen Chris Murphy said a third-party ad supporting Sen. Ted Cruz’s White House bid “makes me want to throw up” because it said the GOP presidential candidate “stopped Obama’s push for gun control laws” in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings.
“If Ted Cruz wants to brandish his pro-gun credentials to Republican primary voters, that’s his right,” Murphy said in a scorching statement. “But it’s sick that he thinks he’ll win votes by specifically pointing out that in the wake of 20 dead first-graders, he was the face of the fight to ensure no action was taken to stop more deranged killers from walking into elementary schools with military-style assault weapons loaded with 30-round clips of ammunition.”
It is sick, and its craven politics without showing the slightest empathy for the parents and siblings whose lives are shattered — not to mention the brave educators who gave their lives fruitlessly trying to protect little kids who had the most honorific, terrifying final moments, as their lives were snuffed out by a real, authentic monster.
But, then, in 21st century America in particular, you’re a weakling if you miss an opening to try and use something, ANYTHING for political gain. Why not refer to the mass murder of little kids?
To some it may give you political gain, to others it will deservedly earn you contempt.
The aim of the Courageous Conservatives PAC’s 60-second spot was to attack Cruz rival Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. A voiceover repeatedly asks “what’s Rubio ever done?”
But the end of the ad, scheduled to air in the key primary state Iowa, is devoted to praising Cruz, R-Texas.
“After Sandy Hook, Ted Cruz stopped Obama’s push for new gun control laws,” the ad says.
Several months after the mass shooting in Newtown, nearly all Senate Republicans — Rubio, too — voted against a bill that would expand FBI background checks of gun buyers. That opposition derailed the bill, which needed 60 votes in the Senate to proceed.
“The new Ted Cruz ad makes me want to throw up, and I’m pretty sure that’s a feeling shared by many who lived through the horror of Sandy Hook,” Murphy said.Murphy also said “showing off how callous he was in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting may win him some right-wing votes that get swept up from Donald Trump or Ben Carson, but it disqualifies him in a general election.”
As someone who worked in the news media for quite a few years abroad and on two newspaper chain newspapers, here’s my favorite part of the story:
The Courageous Conservative PAC did not have an immediate response to Murphy’s comments. Neither did the Cruz campaign.
When that happens on a news story, it usually means they hope the story will go away if they don’t comment.
And, yes, this particular story will go away.
But not the disgust and contempt many people -and not just those still shedding tears over lost ones in Connecticut, being haunted at night by memories of their departed loved one’s last words to them — will feel about groups who tout stopping gun control after little innocent kids and the educators who loved them were murdered. And the courageous campaign that won’t not just disavow, but won’t comment on it.
“Empathy? What’s that? A new procedure by a proctologist?”
No.
But the ad comes close to being one.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.