Shocker: Democrat Complaints About Illegal Calls/Text Messages Turn Out To Be False

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Written By:
Rob Port

Oct 30, 2012
7:17am

Last week, judging by the way Democrats were carrying on, you’d think that a couple of conservative PAC’s were engaged in illegal campaign activities on par with implementing a poll tax or something similar. But, as is the case with a lot of the mud Democrats (who clearly aren’t at all comfortable with where they stand a week out from election day) are slinging lately, there’s more hype than substance.

The text messages originating from the Life and Marriage PAC they were complaining about? While they may be annoying, and perhaps not the smartest campaign tactic (it’s never a good idea to annoy the people you’re trying to persuade), they’re not actually illegal:

The text messages are legal under North Dakota law, said Parrell Grossman, director of the state attorney general’s Consumer Protection and Antitrust Division.

“I think the attorney general certainly understands any frustration with text messages, but again, the North Dakota law would be controlling,” he said Monday.

Also, the alleged “robo calls” the Democrats filed a complaint about? They weren’t actually robo calls:

Meanwhile, another super PAC, Crossroads GPS, has agreed to put a disclaimer at the start of its political phone messages to inform recipients that the call is being made by a live operator, Grossman said.

The move comes after state Rep. Shirley Meyer, D-Dickinson, complained to the attorney general’s office last week that she had received a robo call from Crossroads GPS.

Grossman said his office tracked the Crossroads calls to St. Paul-based Connection Strategy LLC. The group denied making any automated calls, saying its callers often read their scripts in a mechanical way.

Again, I won’t vouch for having bored, wooden telephone operators read prepared scripts to voters in a manner that’s so absent feeling and authenticity that those receiving the calls think they’re talking to a robot as a sound political tactic, but again after an investigation there doesn’t appear to be any actual crimes being committed here.

One almost gets the idea that Democrats are just making wild-eyed accusations in an attempt to create negative headlines for Republicans.

“Losing campaigns have a certain feel to them,” wrote the New York Times’ Ross Douthat recently of President Obama’s campaign. “They go negative hard, try out new messaging very late in the game, hype issues that only their core supporters are focused on, and try to turn non-gaffes and minor slip-ups by their opponents into massive, election-turning scandals.”

I think that applies to North Dakota Democrats too.