Extreme Makeover: The media villagers give Jesse Kelly 2.0 a pass

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

As I posted previously in Extreme Makeover: Jesse Kelly 2.0, "Blog for Arizona is going to go back through our posts from 2010 and repost some of them to demonstrate the "extreme makeover" the RNCC is doing to make Jesse Kelly 2.0 appear more palatable to voters in 2012."

Michael Bryan did a post on Every Republican Congressional Challenger in Arizona Supports a Flat Tax or National Sales Tax that contained this link to the Arizona Voter Guide with Jesse Kelly's 2010 Survey from the Center for Arizona Policy aka the Christian Taliban. http://www.azvoterguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/kellyj.pdf.

Some interesting highlights from Jesse Kelly:

Supports:

Q1.   Replacing the current federal tax code with a flat tax or national sales tax.

Q5.   Amending the United States Constitution to define marriage as between only one man and one woman.

Q12.  Prohibitng abortion except when it is necessary to prevent the death of the mother [only].

Q13.  Passing state laws that authorize local law enforcement officials to enforce federal immigration laws [i.e., SB 1070 type laws].

Opposes:

Q6.   Setting a government cap on carbon emissions, requiring companies to buy emissions credits, and allowing them to trade any leftover credits (called "cap amd trade') [supported by John McCain and Sarah Palin in 2008 presidential campaign].

Q10.  Adding "sexual orientation,' "gender identity," or "gender expression" to the protected classes of race, religion, age, sex and ancestry in discrimination law [The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) currently before Congress] [Related: the Violence Against Women Act amendments currently before Congress].

Q14.  Repealing the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which states that marriage is the union of one man and one woman and declares states do not have to recognize same-sex marriage from oher states.

Arizona has just completed the most radical right-wing session of the Arizona legislature in our 100 year history. The Center for Arizona Policy aka the Chrisitian Taliban got everything they wanted from the radical Tea-Publicans, including restrictions on abortion at 20 weeks that defines "menstruation cycle" in such a way that a woman can be deemed pregnant two weeks before having sexual intercourse; doctors are encouraged to lie to their patients about any potential birth defects by exempting them from "wrongful birth" claims; the defunding of Planned Parenthood for non-abortion health care services to low income women for cancer screening and contraceptive care; and granting a preferential "religious liberty" to corporations that is superior to the constitutional right of religious liberty and liberty of conscience of individual ciitzens.

President Obama expressed his view last week that he believes in marriage equality for same-sex couples. President Obama previously repealed the policy of "don't ask, don't tell," and his administration is not defending the unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act in court.

Tax policy, the Paul Ryan GOP budget 2.0, and Weeper of the House John Boehner's threat to hold America hostage again over the federal debt ceiling to force a radical shredding of the social safety net are all in the news this week.

SB 1070 was just argued before the U.S. Supreme Court and a decision is expected next month.

So how many of these issues have the media villagers questioned Jesse Kelly about? I'll wait.

Time's up. The answer is "none" (of which I am aware, and I don't miss much).

Jesse Kelly 2.0 is trying to frame his campaign on only two issues on which he is engaged in a 'big lie" propaganda campaign: (1) his alleged support to "save" social security and Medicare by destroying it (private accounts for younger workers), and (2) increased domestic energy production which will somehow magically create "millions" of new jobs, just not in Southern Arizona.

The media villagers are staying within the confines of the framing set by Jesse Kelly's campaign and are not aggressively questioning him about his positions on a host of other issues that are currently relevant and topical, like those above. The media villagers are giving Jesse Kelly a pass. They are either incompetent or complicit — your choice media villagers. Which is it?

This is an abject failure of the media to fulfill its obligation to inform the public.