Rumors, Innuendo and Blog posts, oh my
There has been a lot of activity on this and other blogs today where it appears that Reid and Tyberg supporters are knocking each other around a little bit. We even responded to one poster who said we'd ignored Tyberg's campaign - which is simply not true.
We've also heard from a few people that Tyberg supporters are saying that our emphasis on Jeff's trip to Washington, DC was unfair because it was a missions trip. We want to clear the air.
We apologize if the semantics of the trip to Washington caused an uproar (but in the interest of full disclosure, we must point out that on his own blog he spoke directly of going to Baltimore to see Fort McHenry, to tour the Smithsonian's American History Museum and to watch the fireworks on the national mall). For reference here is the link to the post we made on his trip to DC. More important than what we said, this is the link to the conference (called DCLA) Tyberg drove the teens to which includes the following description of the event (which sounds to us like a youth conference, not missions work, but you can visit the website and read this description for yourself) At DCLA 2006, your middle school and senior high students will experience intimate worship, relevant training, and interaction with thousands of other students that will lead to life-changing impact. DCLA is about learning wherever we are, through every experience and in every learning style to help people encounter the Gospel through three stories: God's Story, My Story and Their Story.
[UPDATE 6:55 PM: WE JUST RE-READ TYBERG'S BLOG, THESE ARE HIS OWN WORDS, NOWHERE IN JEFF'S OWN BLOG POST DOES HE CALL IT A MISSIONS TRIP, HE CALLS IT A "WEEKLONG TRIP" WHERE HE "HELPED DRIVE A GROUP OF TEENS FROM IOWA OUT FOR A WEEKEND YOUTH CONVENTION".]
In any event, our point was not to criticize him for taking a missions/conference/youth training trip. As we've said about Jeff, we believe his missions work to be a noble endeavor. We go to church. We like the fact that Tyberg and Reid are both churchgoers as well. However, as we also said, taking a missions/conference/youth training trip on the weekend you can personally touch the most voters in the seventh district raises legitimate questions about how seriously you are taking your campaign. At least it does to us.
We've also heard from Tyberg supporters that it is valuable to have two candidates in this race so as to have two people pointing out Obey's record. That is certainly worth weighing and is valid to consider. We happen to disagree. We believe that having one candidate would free up money sitting on the sidelines and help the remaining candidate to gain valuable forward momentum. You have to look no farther than Scott Walker stepping aside in the gubernatorial race to see the value in that. In fact, we stand by our endorsement even stronger today after Obey attacked the Reid campaign with a push poll. It's clear that Obey has trained his guns on Reid as his main competition in November.
We also have another problem with the two candidate argument because it's often offered in a defeatist manner - many times it's followed with, "we aren't going to raise that much money anyway" or even "it's not like we can beat Obey." We at Obey Out choose to believe that we can win this race and we can raise enough money to beat Obey, but the task is made much more difficult with two candidates running in a primary 7 weeks before the general election.
Switching gears just a little, some commenters have suggested, and we've heard other rumors about who runs this blog, so everyone please read carefully - neither Nick Reid nor anyone on his campaign staff has any control over what is written in our blog posts. We don't check in with them before we post, nor do we post items at their request.
Finally, a couple more points about the contents of this blog (beware we're getting up on our free speech soapbox now, that's why we've made the font smaller, it's like a disclaimer). We stand by what we've said. If you think we're wrong, you're free to post a comment and tell us we're idiots. While we reserve the right to censor patently offensive or profane (our biggest rule, no swearing here, this isn't DailyKos) content, we have not censored any posts for any other reason. A reminder to Dave Obey, Nick Reid and Jeff Tyberg - you guys are running for Congress, not 4th grade class president. If you think our posts or the comments posted here are tough, you shouldn't be running (and back off the soapbox). Commence calling us idiots . . .
We've also heard from a few people that Tyberg supporters are saying that our emphasis on Jeff's trip to Washington, DC was unfair because it was a missions trip. We want to clear the air.
We apologize if the semantics of the trip to Washington caused an uproar (but in the interest of full disclosure, we must point out that on his own blog he spoke directly of going to Baltimore to see Fort McHenry, to tour the Smithsonian's American History Museum and to watch the fireworks on the national mall). For reference here is the link to the post we made on his trip to DC. More important than what we said, this is the link to the conference (called DCLA) Tyberg drove the teens to which includes the following description of the event (which sounds to us like a youth conference, not missions work, but you can visit the website and read this description for yourself) At DCLA 2006, your middle school and senior high students will experience intimate worship, relevant training, and interaction with thousands of other students that will lead to life-changing impact. DCLA is about learning wherever we are, through every experience and in every learning style to help people encounter the Gospel through three stories: God's Story, My Story and Their Story.
[UPDATE 6:55 PM: WE JUST RE-READ TYBERG'S BLOG, THESE ARE HIS OWN WORDS, NOWHERE IN JEFF'S OWN BLOG POST DOES HE CALL IT A MISSIONS TRIP, HE CALLS IT A "WEEKLONG TRIP" WHERE HE "HELPED DRIVE A GROUP OF TEENS FROM IOWA OUT FOR A WEEKEND YOUTH CONVENTION".]
In any event, our point was not to criticize him for taking a missions/conference/youth training trip. As we've said about Jeff, we believe his missions work to be a noble endeavor. We go to church. We like the fact that Tyberg and Reid are both churchgoers as well. However, as we also said, taking a missions/conference/youth training trip on the weekend you can personally touch the most voters in the seventh district raises legitimate questions about how seriously you are taking your campaign. At least it does to us.
We've also heard from Tyberg supporters that it is valuable to have two candidates in this race so as to have two people pointing out Obey's record. That is certainly worth weighing and is valid to consider. We happen to disagree. We believe that having one candidate would free up money sitting on the sidelines and help the remaining candidate to gain valuable forward momentum. You have to look no farther than Scott Walker stepping aside in the gubernatorial race to see the value in that. In fact, we stand by our endorsement even stronger today after Obey attacked the Reid campaign with a push poll. It's clear that Obey has trained his guns on Reid as his main competition in November.
We also have another problem with the two candidate argument because it's often offered in a defeatist manner - many times it's followed with, "we aren't going to raise that much money anyway" or even "it's not like we can beat Obey." We at Obey Out choose to believe that we can win this race and we can raise enough money to beat Obey, but the task is made much more difficult with two candidates running in a primary 7 weeks before the general election.
Switching gears just a little, some commenters have suggested, and we've heard other rumors about who runs this blog, so everyone please read carefully - neither Nick Reid nor anyone on his campaign staff has any control over what is written in our blog posts. We don't check in with them before we post, nor do we post items at their request.
Finally, a couple more points about the contents of this blog (beware we're getting up on our free speech soapbox now, that's why we've made the font smaller, it's like a disclaimer). We stand by what we've said. If you think we're wrong, you're free to post a comment and tell us we're idiots. While we reserve the right to censor patently offensive or profane (our biggest rule, no swearing here, this isn't DailyKos) content, we have not censored any posts for any other reason. A reminder to Dave Obey, Nick Reid and Jeff Tyberg - you guys are running for Congress, not 4th grade class president. If you think our posts or the comments posted here are tough, you shouldn't be running (and back off the soapbox). Commence calling us idiots . . .
posted by ObeyOut2006 at 5:53 PM
3 Comments:
I can't believe Tyberg's supporters take this all so personally. This is politics. If you can't take a few blog posts from people who don't think you're running a good campaign, what would you do if Obey's machine started in on you. This would seem like Sunday School class compared to that.
This was over on GOP-SPOT. One of Tyberg's volnuteers (that spelling error is his not mine) sent an e-mail to other volunteers accusing Reid (according to him it's Ried) of running your blog.
From: Timothy Krenz, Volnuteer Coordinator, Tyberg for Congress
Dear Tyberg Volunteers,
Listed below are a couple of political blogs. Both are suspicious in that they claim open-mindedness but have anonymous authors who support Nick Ried, Jeff Tyberg's opponent for the Republican nomination against David Obey. These blogs need to be refuted. We suspect these sites to be "spin" machines under the direction of Ried. The record must be set straight. Only supporters of Jeff can do that.
Please take the time to visit these blogs and post statements of your support for Jeff! This will be a great help to Jeff and his campaign.
(end of the e-mail)
I'm anxiously awaiting how they intend to set the record straight. And complaining about the terminology of what on earth Tyberg was doing in DC on the 4th does not count.
Thank you for clearing that up Jeff and Nick. That is good a move. Let's all get back to worrying about Obey!
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