Thompson Calls On Huckabee To Stop Push Polls

CBS ^ | 1/17/08 | John Bentley

[pissant]

PROSPERITY, S.C. -- Fred Thompson called on Mike Huckabee to put a stop to push polling calls that misrepresent Thompson’s record.

“I find it ironic that this man would talk about cleaner politics and rising above the fray,” Thompson said, “while this is going on right under his nose.”

At an event in Prosperity today, a Thompson volunteer stood up during the audience questions portion and said a lot of people had received negative phone calls that “misrepresented your record.”

“Really?” Thompson asked, seeming genuinely surprised. “Could I ask you to raise your hand if you got a phone call like that?”

Roughly half the 75 people in attendance raised their hands.

“Good gracious,” Thompson said. “Who do they say is calling? Do they say anything good about any candidate?”

“Huckabee,” the audience responded.

[barryg]

I will take Huckabee over McCain any day. Huckabee is more flexible , McCain is a proven moderate.

[georgiagirl_pam]

Bless your heart! :)

[Soliton]

The positions in the polls have been predicted accurately with the exception of Dems in NH. The spreads have been a little off.

[TalonDJ]

Also, per Limbaugh and other articles here on FR, Fred is hitting a lot of very small towns. Whereas most canidates don’t in SC due to time constraints. Some other poster pointed out this small crowd was in a town of something like 1100 people. That is really tiny!

[newnhdad]

He could have told them to stop when they got caught doing this in NH. He could have denounced this type of pressure polling and asked people to ignore it.
But that would be like Hillary’s people to denounce the Chinese for donating money to campaigns.

[Def Conservative]

So Huckabee can’t even keep his own supporters under control...what’s he gonna do when it’s time to take on the Democrats with all the bogus constitutional amendments he’s proposing?

[TheThirdRuffian]

Yep, full of rot and corruption inside.

[isrul]

You see it. I see it. Why can’t everyone see it?

[TheThirdRuffian]

Same reason Jimmy Carter got away with it, I think.

That, and candidly, there is a huge Christian Socialist undercurrent in this country, for whom people like Jimmy Carter and Mike Huckabee speak.

[isrul]

You’re right about that. The assumption that Christians, especially evangelicals are all conservative has always been a myth.

[AFA-Michigan]

See post 77, which proves your assertion is false.

[diotima]

Pollsters don’t work for free, its actually rather costly. Who is paying these people?

[newnhdad]

The call came in January a few weeks after he claimed to ask the groups to stop, so it’s not false.

I did hear him say this YESTERDAY on one of the talk shows, but it’s easy to criticize when you’re the beneficiary of the attacks.

Again, like Hillary saying “I’ll give'em their money back......... if they take it ....or maybe they can return it to the campaign... which means we don’t have to give it back.. which means I’ll keep the money after all..”

You can’t unring the bell, but that’s politics.

[Jane Austen]

Huckabee is a little better than McCain. You are being kind to McCain by calling him a moderate. His amnesty push was radical left. He voted against barring MS13 and terrorists! Why would anyone want them here?

[AFA-Michigan]

You accused him of not publicly calling on whomever was responsible to stop the calls. That was false. He publicly criticized the calls in Iowa, in NH, and again in SC. So first you falsely accuse him, then when proven wrong, say that it was “easy” for him to criticize the calls. Please explain exactly, precisely what — if anything — additional he could do about the calls that you believe would be sufficient and honorable.

[newnhdad]

He didn’t go to the press in NH to denounce it at least it was never portrayed in the mainstream media like that. Only time I heard him say anything publicly about the pollsters was two days ago. before you point me to a website, a press releases on a website don’t really mean anything to people that don’t go to the website.
What could he have done? From the start, he could have called out the company that is doing this for that 527 group, told people to ignore the calls from that group and flood the FEC with complaints about that group. He could have told people to block calls from the company that does this (if they have that feature) and taken out an ad or a series of ads stating how he doesn’t support this stuff.
That is what someone needs to do, maybe not him, but someone needs to go after this garbage politicking before the real elections so the public is aware of it.

Look, he benefited from this 527 nonsense and the only one I blame for that is McCain, who himself is a victim of attacks from these groups too which is sweet justice to those of us that don’t like the restrictions placed on speech by McCain/Feingold.

[AFA-Michigan]

I guess I should have also asked you to suggest something that was actually reasonable. You suggest he should have spent scarce advertising dollars to run ads denouncing an independent expenditure committee. That would not be a smart use of limited campaign resources. And he did condemn the robo-calls in NH, as he had earlier in Iowa.

All that said, if what the robo-calls say is the truth, then I’m wondering what all the fuss is about. I actually received one, and it sounded professional, inoffensive, and truthful. I for one was not the least bit offended. But whadda I know...once I realized what it was, I hung up before it finished. What exactly did the calls say, if anything, that was untrue?

[AFA-Michigan]

USA Today, Jan 6th: “Huckabee has denounced the activity.”

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-01-06-groups_N.htm