Friday was a crazy day. National Republicans attempted to censor our Medicare ad from New Hampshire TV -- as Jed posted, "Republicans may have passed a plan to end Medicare and replace it with vouchers for private insurance, but apparently they don't want their political opponents to be able to tell anybody about it."
But the day ended with welcome news, as reported in Talking Points Memo:
Progressive Change Campaign Committee has won a round against the National Republican Congressional Committee -- with the liberal group turning back an effort to get an ad targeting Republican proposals on Medicare pulled from broadcast.
Republicans fear our powerful ad. We're staying on offense, increasing our ad buy today, and aiming to reach a big milestone on the fundraising page for this ad: $100,000. Click here to chip in $3 to get us toward our goal -- and see Rachel Maddow talk about our Friday victory.
This ad, created with our friends at Democracy for America, made a big splash in just one day. Here's the chronology of what happened:
In a letter to TV stations [PDF], the National Republican Congressional Committee and Charlie Bass wrote:
It has come to our attention that the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy for America (“Progressive Change”) has purchased air time on your cable network to run a negative advertisement targeting Charlie Bass...
The Advertisement states, in pertinent part, that "Charlie Bass voted to END Medicare." This is completely false... a vote in favor of the [Paul Ryan] Budget Resolution was a vote to protect Medicare for future seniors.
Paul Krugman, Nobel economist and New York Times columnist, defended our ad:
If they can get away with this, it will amount to a serious infringement of free speech, preventing people from running truthful ads. Because the fact is that Republicans are trying to end Medicare.
Around 6pm, Talking Points Memo wrote the story above and Washington Post reported:
“We are continuing to air the ad,” Chris Ellis, a spokesman for Comcast’s ad sales division, tells me. “We’ve reviewed the materials provided by the NRCC and the documentation provided by the advertisers, and we’ve decided that the ad does meet our guidelines.”
VICTORY! Click here to chip in $3 and keep this powerful ad on TV! Then, please pass this to your friends.