Remember the Beallsville miners who were ordered to attend an unpaid “mandatory, but nobody was forced to attend” campaign rally for Romey? According to the Chicago Tribune, Willard’s campaign is doubling down on the venality:
On Wednesday, the Mitt Romney campaign released an ad spotlighting President Obama’s putative “War On Coal,” despite a controversy in Ohio about the coal miners’ rally featured in the spot. In the ad, Romney appears on a stage before rows of hard-hatted miners, their faces smudged with coal dust, as he says, “We have 250 years of coal. Why wouldn’t we use it?”
The rally was held last month in Beallsville, Ohio, thick with miners from the Century coal mine, owned by Murray Energy, a major donor to Republican causes. Within days of the rally, Murray employees contacted a nearby morning talk radio host, David Blomquist, to say they were forced to attend the Aug. 14 event at the mine….
The “War On Coal” ad is clearly aimed at shoring up Romney’s support among working-class white men and at making inroads into Obama’s persistent lead in the crucial battleground state of Ohio.
Asked about Romney’s use of video from a rally that miners were forced to attend and that cost many a day’s wages, Romney spokesman Ryan Williams chose instead to focus on Obama: “”It remains a widely accepted fact among Democrats and Republicans alike that President Obama has spent the past four years waging a war on coal that has devastated Ohio workers and coal communities. This is one reason why the nation’s largest coal mining union, the United Mine Workers of America, has refused to endorse his reelection.”
The union has not endorsed Romney either…
The mine is owned by Robert Murray, an enthusiastic Romney supporter and major contributor to the Republican Party on his own and through Murray Energy, one of the largest private coal companies in the U.S. Murray and his wife have given Republican candidates a total of $471,185 since the 2008 election, including the maximum of $5,000 each to Romney this year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Additionally, employees of Murray Energy and its subsidiaries contributed almost $1.5 million to Republicans over the same period.
Somebody really needs to tell Eric “Etch-A-Sketch” Fehrnstrom that George Orwell did not write 1984 as an instruction manual.
(I owe some commentor a hat tip, if you want to claim it.)
We Are Naught But Props In Romney’s World (Coal County Edition)Post + Comments (59)