Dkos community - From a local involved in politics down here in the Houston area I want to post a plea to those of you who may be affiliated with Democracy for America to think about the billboards that recently went up in CD 22.
While I support the billboard concept wholeheartedly, the specifics on the billboards that went up this week worry me. "Corporations spent millions to send DeLay golfing and all you got was this billboard."
This slogan is clearly a message from out of district liberal going after DeLay. If there's one thing that we don't want is for DeLay to be able to rally moderate Republicans against "national" Democrats. That's going to be a huge part of his message and we need to avoid as much as possible, playing into that.
I don't want to just be critical but there has been another billboard idea floating around down here and I want to make people aware of it. Instead of billboards that go after DeLay in such a head-on manner, why don't we have billboards that simply make use of some of DeLay's nutcase quotes. The concept of, "DeLay in his own words."
Things like "I am the federal government." Some of his recent comments on the judiciary, having these kinds of billboards 1) Will make people in the district aware of how truly on the fringe DeLay is, 2) Force him to answer questions about his extreme views from reporters who write about the billboards, 3) Rob him of the ability to accuse "liberals" of being after him, they would, after all be HIS words.
Again, I applaud DFA for putting its weight behind getting rid of DeLay but I want to make the point that as much as we want to keep hitting DeLay hard, there are ways to hit him and there are ways to hit him that will resonate with the moderate to conservative voters in the district, and better keep the focus on his record of corruption and extremism.