The Conservative Solutions Project dropped a campaign mailer in New Hampshire this week. Edward Snowden is the hammer and Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Bernie Sanders are on the anvil.
What does it attempt to teach us about them? Ted Cruz has not branded Edward Snowden as a traitor for exposing NSA spying on everyone and everything. Cruz has concerns about constitutional protections as does Senator Paul, and Senator Sanders has stated that Snowden’s antics played an important role in educating the American public.
So what? The Conservative Solutions Project, which has ties to Conservative Solutions, a Rubio Super PAC, is a secret money group. Can you taste the irony?
The mailer encourages voters to ask these gentlemen why they refuse to criticize traitor Snowden’s illegal actions.
I think ordinary citizens should ask Marco “Big Brother” Rubio to go on the record (again and again) in support of the mass surveillance of Americans. No glossy mailer required.
Would a president Rubio “secretly” approve domestic surveillance by the NSA? Without a warrant? If not warrant-less how close to it? And not why but how? And how do you propose to keep this power from escaping its masters or its masters from abusing it?
And, this is a big one, why didn’t the secret money group, which is reported to have used a report based on extensive research on voters in early primary states, not know that New Hampshire has never been all that keen on surveillance?
The legislative history suggests that this particular piece of mail will not have the desired impact.
So, could the mailer have any positive impact at all or will it backfire?
I’m going with the latter. I don’t find the copy to be all that persuasive and I know that both Senators Cruz and Paul can articulate the constitutional and privacy concerns, in conjunction with national security, with conviction. So go ahead and ask them. This isn’t a any sort of soft spot for either of them making this mailer not just unpersuasive and ill placed but a waste of money that will only encourage a debate about the need to ensure rights that our enemies loathe.
As for Sanders, his thoughts on Snowden and surveillance pale under the weight of the lefts desire to limit speech and to use the force of government to do it.
And for the record, I don’t take issue with the money (see also, free speech), nor the secret part (see also, anonymous speech). I just found it interesting that it was done with “secret” money given the subject matter.
