Amanda Terkel of the Huffingtonpost wrote a story about how a new group "Use Your Mandate" - who refuse to say who they are, have no phone number, no address and no website - yet was founded with enough money to spend millions of dollars running commercials touting GOP talking points by calling Hagel "Anti-Israel" on all the Sunday talk shows.
On Sunday, viewers watching the morning public affairs shows -- NBC's "Meet the Press," CBS's "Face the Nation" and ABC's "This Week" -- will also see a commercial from Use Your Mandate urging senators to vote against Hagel. The spot will also run for a couple of days next week on MSNBC.
Interesting they are allegedly not running ads on Fox - hmmmm ....
Again, the nagging facts remain, the group "Use Your Mandate" has no phone number, no website and no street address yet they were founded with enough money to spend millions of dollars on all Sunday shows except Fox ... hmmmm....
Not only did this anonymously funded "Use Your Mandate" group somehow founded with millions to spend on commercials, it also was founded to spend hundreds of thousand on a mailer to 350,000 people that says
Hagel's "extremist" views on Israel, guns, women's reproductive rights and LGBT issues make him the "wrong choice" for secretary of defense.
Anonymously funded "Use Your Mandate" mailer
That phrase: "Hagel's 'extremist' views on Israel" has been a GOP talking point since Lindsey Graham first coined it after word got out that President Obama may pick Hagel as Secretary of State.
The newly anonymously funded "Use Your Mandate's" ads say that Hagel is: Anti-Israel, Anti-women and Anti-gay which has an eerie similarity to the New York Times ad from the Log Cabin Republicans. In the Log Cabin Republican New York Times ad, they highlighted:
"Chuck Hagel: Bad on Gay Rights. Bad on Iran. Bad on Israel. Tell President Obama that Chuck Hagel is wrong for Defense Secretary"
Log Cabin Republican New York Time Full Page Ad on Dec 27, 2012
According to Terkel, the group "Use Your Mandate" wants to stay anonymous because they are friends of President Obama and are afraid of retaliation .... hmmmmm...
The source close to the group said that for now, those involved are choosing to stay anonymous because they are allies with the Obama administration and hesitant to criticize the president publicly or fear retribution or pressure from the White House. The source characterized members as a "concerned group of people who ... have some questions about Chuck Hagel, including individuals who have "fought for LGBT rights for a long time."
In my opinion, the translation the above is: the anonymous group are Republicans who are pretending to be Democrats claiming President Obama retaliates against other Democrats with opposing views.
Last night I sent Amanda Terkel an email asking her for the contact information so I could call the "Use Your Mandate" people and ask them questions. She has not emailed me back. I noticed people are asking Amanda for contact information on Twitter and she has not yet provided any.
I am always suspicious of an anonymously funded group who is founded with millions of dollars to spend on commercials and thousands of dollars on mailers. Something very smelly about the claims from the anonymously funded "Use Your Mandate"
This anonymously funded group, "Use Your Mandate" in my opinion, is pushing the GOP talking points regarding Iran, Israel etc and merely claiming to be Democrats. I won't believe they are Democrats until they reveal themselves.
On a side note: I find it very "interesting" that the Log Cabin Republicans publicly endorsed Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan yet have taken out full page Ads in New York Times criticizing Hagel, while other LGBT organizations have been cautiously more supportive.
On October 23, 2012, R. Clarke Cooper, the president of Log Cabin, said that even though Romney supports the Federal Marriage Amendment - that would ban gay marriage - Romney's support for the amendment does not disqualify him from getting the group's endorsement because "times have changed."
Cooper also expressed optimism that Romney would change his position on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).
In a Huffingtonpost article reported
As one Log Cabin Republican board member explained at the Republican National Convention this year, “We don’t listen to what a candidate actually says. We try to feel where they seem to stand.”
Oh well, back to the anonymously funded "Use Your Mandate" -- I won't be surprised if we learn that wealthy Republicans founded the group and claimed to be Democrats as a means to get Democrat voters to rise up against Hagel.