Bill Berkowitz: Our country deserves better than the Our Country Deserves Better PAC's 'Stop Obama Tour'

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Bill Berkowitz

Although the California-based PAC is coming to the end of its less-than-magical and less-than-mystical bus 'Tour' -- which drew tens of people to rallies -- it is running hundreds of thousands of dollars of television ads in battleground states smearing Obama.

Our Country Deserves Better PAC is in its final stages of motoring about the country in a bus plastered with photos of Sen. John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, and the words "Stop Obama Tour," emblazoned on it. Armed with a portfolio of pro-McCain television advertisements, the Tour -- a 6,000 mile pro-McCain/Palin bus tour with rallies in 40 cities -- is still in search of a receptive audience. Strangely enough, Our Country camped out in Michigan during a recent three-day period, a state the McCain campaign abandoned earlier this month. The Detroit Free Press reported that the group was "trying to whip up enthusiasm for the Republican ticket." At a stopover in Troy, Michigan, the Tour apparently whipped up a crowd of about 50 people!

(More photos of Our Country's Tour leaders and an early stop in Pueblo, Colorado.)

The Free Press pointed out that PAC spokesman Joe Wierzbicki acknowledged that Our Country was spending $500,000 on TV ads in Michigan linking Obama to Gov. Jennifer Granholm, former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, controversial pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and former domestic terrorist William Ayers. The group might have drawn bigger crowds, more attention, and greater enthusiasm if it had added the names of the formerly-beleaguered-and-now-fired Detroit Lions General Manager Matt Millen, or Rich Rodriguez, the coach of the University of Michigan's underachieving Wolverines, to their list of evil-doers!

Wierzbicki told NationalJournal.com that the group was putting its resources into the state precisely because the McCain camp had pulled out: "We think the people of Michigan will appreciate that their votes and their issues are going to be discussed and debated and fought for." (I e-mailed Wierzbicki several questions but had not received a response by the time we went to press.)

Our Country is throwing up its anti-Obama 30-second television advertisements in a number of battleground states. Before heading for Michigan, the group stopped off in Colorado. In conjunction with the Tour, the PAC started airing an attack ad in Colorado that is "essentially a compilation of most of the character and association attacks made against Barack Obama throughout the year," CBS News reported.

According to The Colorado Independent, "The tour hasn't been without its mishaps and disappointments. Crowds -- using the term loosely -- have been 'small but dedicated,' according to a tour blog kept by conservative commentator Mark Williams." On his blog, Williams pointed out that the crowd was "hungry for any indication of life from the GOP and we are being greeted as political saviours."

In mid-September, when I did a long interview with Joe Wierzbicki ("PAC Man"), he said the group would do all that it could to discredit Obama. But, Wierzbicki promised, there were lines that the group wouldn't cross. Now it seems that those lines were a might thin.

In the interview with Media Transparency, Wierzbicki said that group was not in any way linked to the McCain campaign. He pointed out that the "initial focus" of Our Country "was centered around the inexperience, ignorance and arrogance that define[d] Senator Obama's weakness as a candidate, and thus make him an unacceptable choice to serve as our nation's next president and Commander in Chief." At the time, Wierzbicki was effusive in his praise for Sarah Palin, now unofficially known in some circles as the Rogue Diva. Wierzbicki proclaimed that the group would "continue to celebrate her nomination as the Republican candidate for Vice President of the United States."

Our Country Deserves Better PAC is a California-based operation run by longtime Republican Party operatives Howard Kaloogian and Sal Russo. Kaloogian, the chairman of the PAC, served as Assistant Republican Leader in the California State Assembly during his six-year term in office. In 2003, he helped lead the drive to recall California Governor Gray Davis, which successfully brought Davis down and gave the world of politics Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Kaloogian is also the co-founder, along with Melanie Morgan, then a co-host of a Bay Area morning radio show, of the pro-Iraq war group Move America Forward, who also made trips around the country part of its modus operandi.

Sal Russo, who according to the group's Web site "got his start in politics by working as a Special Assistant to Ronald Reagan" and who "has spent over 30 years in the field of political consulting and public affairs," is the campaign's Chief Strategist.

The group has at least nine ads in its arsenal: "Obama, Ayers, Wright, Kilpatrick"; "Obama/Granholm Wrong for MI"; "Obama's Wrong Values"; "Obama's Patriotism Problem"; "Hillary Clinton Rip[s] Barack Obama"; "Sarah's a Fighter"; "Obama Not Faithful to Our Military"; "Obama's Awful High Tax Policies"; and "Obama's Liberal Policies Are Wrong."

The "Stop Obama Tour" is winding down. It is scheduled to make its final stops in Erie, Pittsburgh and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on Tuesday, October 28, and end up in Washington, D.C. on October 29.

Unlike the late best-selling author Ken Kesey ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Sometimes a Great Notion") and the Merry Pranksters' 1939 International Harvester bus that was dubbed "Furthur," and made history carrying a band of noted and not-so-noted psychedelic-driven hippies around the country in the sixties and was immortalized in Tom Wolfe's 1968 book "The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test," the bus of Our Country Deserves Better PAC will likely become but a pimple on the ass of history.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement and a frequent writer for Media Transparency and other online publications. He documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the American Right from a progressive perspective.

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