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Conservative Turns Tables, Wins Lefty Video Contest to Oppose ‘Big Money in Our Politics’
A funny thing happened to a video contest put on by lefties to highlight the scourge of big money in politics. A conservative video won!
The video with the most votes — by a factor of 20 — highlighted the influence of the biggest individual spender in American politics today: Billionaire left-wing activist Tom Steyer. But we should expect that victory by popular acclaim to be erased from memory by the leftists, Soviet-style. Let me explain.
MoveOn.org and MayDay.us asked the public to “make a 30-second ad to wake up America to the crisis of big money in our politics.” BTW: MayDay.us is a SuperPAC that brags of raising $10.6 million so far this election cycle to… wait for it… “reduce the influence of money in politics.”
The low-information audience of these left-wing outfits has been trained to hate the Koch Brothers, so American Commitment President Phil Kerpen figured they could do for a little truth that pops their bubble. Kerpen decided to produce and submit his own entry in this contest starring Steyer — whose political contributions make the Koch Brothers look like grandma slipping a couple of Andrew Jacksons into an envelope to the RNC.
You may remember that Steyer, a former Wall Street hedge fund manager, pledged to spend a staggering $50 million of his own fortune (and raise another $50 million on top of that) to support candidates in the 2014 midterm elections who would carry his climate-alarmist water. Steyer, according to USA Today, has spent a total of $13.7 million for attack ads via his SuperPac NextGen Climate Action against Republican candidates in four states. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. As Politico noted (emphasis mine):
A person close to Steyer confirmed the $100 million figure to POLITICO but cautioned that it is not a ceiling.
Kerpen’s ad, titled “America’s Biggest Hypocrite,” told the truth: The only “out-of-state billionaire” spending money in the Iowa Senate race is Tom Steyer:
And a funny thing happened: Kerpen’s video won the voting, which closed on Wednesday, October 15 — getting about 2,500 votes with second place coming in at around 200. Then a not-so-funny-thing happened: The contest organizers extended the voting period to Friday, October 17 at 5 p.m. ET. Why? So MoveOn.org had the time to email its millions of supporters to correct this embarrassment to the leftist cause.
Then an even funnier thing happened: Kerpen’s Steyer video exponentially increased its victory. Here was the final count on Friday evening at the close of voting:
1. “America’s Biggest Hypocrite”: 7,590 votes
2 .“The Government We Created”: 364 votes
3. [No Title], by Brad B.: 296 votes
4. “I will not be silenced”: 256 votes
5. “Alyssa wants to be a Senator”: 191 votes
6. “A penny a day to keep corruption away”: 129 votes
T7. “Money Talks”: 118 votes
T7. “Money Looms Over All”: 118 votes
9. “Get the Money Out 2″: 105 votes
10. “This is Your Country”: 99 votes
11. “The Devil’s Making a Call”: 61 votes
[NOTE: Go to the deliciously titled site Wish Pond if you have a hankering to view the loser lefty agit-prop vids.]
Next, of course, will come the rigging of the election, the overturning of popular acclaim. Like the event that made the American left go off the deep end — the 2000 presidential election — the winner of this video contest will be “selected, not elected.”
BAM! The left’s revenge is a dish served so cold it’s 14 years later — via the rigging of a silly video contest to prevent MoveOn’s low-information audience from learning that the real, unaccountable, out-of-control Mr. Monopoly of our politics is lefty billionaire Tom Steyer.
The organizers of this contest have assembled an All-Star “Supreme Court” of judges to assess the true winner. The panel includes George Takei of “Star Trek,” Jason Alexander of “Seinfeld,” Obama iconographer Shepard Fairey, and former MSNBC “Young Turk” Cenk Uygur.” They will judge the “finalists” by a criteria that totally discounts the vote. Kerpen’s video does well on three of the four… but the fourth is a killer:
- Does the video make compelling the importance of money in politics? [YES]
- How creative is the video in delivering the concept/message? [VERY, especially compared to much of the hapless competition.]
- Does the video have the “x” factor that a true political ad would need to move the needle on the issue of money in politics? [YES, and it should air on TV.]
- Does the video effectively communicate the MAYDAY message? [NO, because it is not a commie screed against the Kochs and Wall Street.]
Say the organizers:
We have entrusted our esteemed panel of “Supreme Court” judges to evaluate these videos against these criteria to select the winning entry in each category. Best of luck to all of our entrants!
… all except for Kerpen. Certainly not him. He should rot in Hell, with all the other (non-lefty) plutocrats!
Published in General
Interestingly, there is still a chance to make hay on the fourth item. My guess is that MAYDAY has a high-minded mission statement which somehow omits explicitly trashing Koch et al. If they try to stand on the fourth, there’s a great opportunity to rub their nose in yet another exercise of hypocrisy.
Their rhetoric about being the “party of the poor” is key to the Democrat’s messaging, and messaging is really all they do. It’s a complete myth, and we need to do whatever we can do to deflate it.
This story completely bears out Thomas Sowell’s estimation of what liberals & conservatives consider to be a fair contest. A conservative considers the contest to be fair so long as everyone was restricted by the same rules and limitations. After that, let the chips fall where they may.
A liberal considers the contest to be fair only when the result is a win for their side.
The American Left is nothing more than a bunch of petulant children.
Where can we donate to have Kerpen’s video all over TV?
Thank you so much for sharing this great story, Jim.
Kerpen should repost the video on a site called TheRealWinner.com or something like that.
This is how they run the Oscars.
Like!
Yeah, love it.
Heh-heh… Just today one of my sweet yet wildly left wing Facebook friends from high school “liked” nextgenclimate.org :
And, per Wikipedia, NextGen Climate Action is Tom Steyer.