Pity Mr. VanderSloot doesn’t file a lawsuit.
His response? Mr. VanderSloot acknowledges that "when I first learned that President Obama's campaign had singled me out on his 'enemies list,' I knew it was like taping a target on my back." But the more he's thought it through, "the public beatings and false accusations that followed are no deterrent. These tactics will not work in America." He's even "contemplating a second donation."
Actually, Frank VanderSloot has a history of threatening to do that — and as Scoutmaster points out in Post #23, he's sometimes used aggressive tactics in problematic ways.
He's a big opponent of gay marriage (good for him!) and a big supporter of Mitt Romney (not good) who is willing to use his money to “out” his opponents. I have zero problem with him doing that, but now it's being done back to him by people who, unlike some of his prior opponents, have sufficient money to fight back.
VanderSloot appears to have a long history of pretty aggressive attacks against opponents that I think would raise questions from Freepers who do he same kind of things to liberals that VanderSloot is complaining about being done to him. Here's one article by Salon on him:
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/17/billionaire_romney_donor_uses_threats_to_silence_critics/
There are quite a few other articles as well about VanderSloot which appear to cite facts using publicly available information. I don't think VanderSloot is a naive businessman who made a big donation to conservative causes and then got slammed for doing so.
If the claims in this article are true, he's a wealthy supporter of Mitt Romney who succeeded in business using some pretty aggressive tactics which he then applied to his critics in politics, and is now getting the same kind of scrutiny applied to him by liberals that we as conservatives would give to a wealthy supporter of Barack Obama.
That's America.
For whatever it's worth, while I don't like his support of Mitt Romney one bit, it certainly looks like he's done a lot of good for the opponents of gay marriage. I have no agenda against VanderSloot — I just wish he'd stick to fighting gay marriage and wasn't a Romney supporter.
The truth will come out sooner or later. If all VanderSloot did was make threats against “little guys” who were mad about his big donations, he's now playing in the big leagues and has found out that both sides fight hard.
Money can buy lots of things, but it can't buy freedom from critics — and shouldn't.
My guess is that when all is said and done, all we'll find here is that VanderSloot is having the same tactics applied to him that he's applied to others, and as a Mormon businessman, I expect that an in-depth evaluation of his personal and professional background won't turn up anything too bad.