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Bosworth Campaign Still Looking for Competent Communications Coordinator

Hot off the YouTube press, GOP Senate candidate Annette Bosworth lays out for South Dakota voters everything she knows about the pressing policy issues facing our state:

Nothing says "Elect me Senator!" like reading with your lips moving and having your husband post your random silent outtakes online.

Actually, Bosworth's husband, Chad Haber, managed to get his flip phone to spit up a separate minute video in which his wife explains that she is signing the Senate Conservatives Fund's pledge to repeal every line of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or at least defund it. Apparently Larry Rhoden has signed it, too.

To be clear, that means Bosworth and Rhoden want to restore the ability of insurers to deny kids coverage just because they were sick once before. They want to restore the anti-life position of charging women more than men for insurance just because women can have babies. They want to take away the ability of parents to keep their kids on their health plan through age 26 if they think that's best for their family. They want to take away required coverage for preventive care and let insurers restore lifetime limits on coverage.

The big difference: Larry Rhoden didn't have his wife make a dull video of it. Larry Rhoden's wife then did not splash her name across the video to promote herself. Larry Rhoden's wife did not then slap the name of her company or her non-profit project on top of a clearly political video.

Screen caps of really bad Annette Bosworth campaign video
Screen caps of really bad Annette Bosworth campaign video

Apparently still unable to communicate effectively or follow the law, Chad Haber commits all of those errors. Throwing his name on this campaign video shows that in his mind, this Senate campaign is as much about him as about his wife. (Really, who is running the show on Team Bosworth, Annette?). The video is framed to clearly display Bosworth's business name in the background (and it's not even displayed well; it's a message scrawled on a markerboard, for Pete's sake!). And then the crawl below the candidate fails to offer the candidate's campaign webpage. Oh no: campaign videographer Haber thinks it's more important to give everyone the URL to his Meaningful Missions project, one of the heads of the squishy hyrda that floats between Haber's and Bosworth's for-profit business and their non-profit Preventive Health Strategies. To top it off, Haber forgets an "s" in the URL.

Haber thus leaves viewers and voters wondering just what the Sam Hill he's doing. Is he making a campaign video? Is he promoting his non-profit? Or is he proving that he's using his non-profit's time, office, and resources to produce electioneering communications, in complete violation of IRS 501(c)3 rules and South Dakota campaign law?

Update 16:58 CDT: David Montgomery reports that M. Michael Rounds, who isn't signing any pledges, says that symbolic votes to defund the PPACA are a waste of time.

Update 20:13 CDT: Annette Bosworth has pretended to be the next Tom Coburn, the physician-Senator from Oklahoma. She should pay attention to Senator Coburn, who said last week that the GOP hype about defunding ObamaCare is bad politics:

In a phone interview from his home state of Oklahoma, Coburn slammed a dozen fellow Republican senators who have signed a pledge not to vote for any continuing resolution or appropriations bill that funds Obamacare, which is set to go fully into effect on January 1, 2014. “I’d love to defund it,” said Coburn, a physician who has opposed the president’s national health care scheme from the beginning. “I’d be leading the charge if I thought this would work. But it will not work.” (For details on the problems with the defunding plan, see here.)

Coburn’s case against the proposal is simple: Republicans, having failed to win control of the White House and Senate in 2012, do not have the votes to cut off Obamacare funding. Given that, he sees the defunding proposal as not just wrongheaded but also an effort to mislead conservatives across the country who long to see Republicans stop Obamacare. “The worst thing is being dishonest with your base about what you can accomplish, ginning everybody up and then creating disappointment,” Coburn said. “It’s a terribly dangerous and not successful strategy.”

“You’re going to set an expectation among the conservatives in our party that we can achieve something that we’re not able to achieve,” Coburn continued. “It’s not an achievable strategy. It’s creating the false impression that you can do something when you can’t. And it’s dishonest” [Bryon York, "Tom Coburn: Campaign to Defund ObamaCare 'Dishonest,' 'Hype'," Washington Examiner, 2013.07.26].

6 Comments

  1. Kal Lis 2013.07.30

    I'm sure voters looking for evidence of Bosworth's pledge will appreciate searching YouTube for an untitled video.

    On a broader note, doesn't Bosworth need a message to communicate before she hires communication director?

  2. caheidelberger Post author | 2013.07.30

    Come now, Kal Lis, you can hire a debate coach before you know the Nat Quals topics.

  3. Douglas Wiken 2013.07.30

    Bosworth can hire me to let SD know she is out to lunch.

  4. Kevin Weiland 2013.08.01

    Fascinating that anyone with such a pro-life position would ever want to repeal the Affordable Care Act. By not having insurance, we will essentially be restricting women’s access to safe, affordable health care. Statistics show that women with poor health at the time of conception are more likely to miscarry than those in good health. http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/MaternalInfantHealth/InfantMortality.htm If a women’s health is neglected prior to a pregnancy, she has a far greater chance of miscarriage. Repeal of the ACA is just another step backwards in prenatal care in this country.

  5. John Hess 2013.08.01

    Pro-lifers care more about forcing people to have children rather than caring for those already born. That's odd too.

    PS - We can claim Larry Rhodens wife as a Madisonite, although I think she transferred from the Orland school. A family of educators.

  6. John Hess 2013.08.01

    They talk about the sanctity of life for the unborn, but after the birth, they better get some bootstraps.

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