[The above is the front-page of the May 25, 2003 Sunday issue of the Argus Leader. It was the extensive effort by David Kranz to discredit Paul Erickson, one of the Republicans who was to organize the Daschle Accountability Project. The report went on to consume the entire page 4A.]
As I said in an earlier post, the issue of accountability provides us with the kind of double standards that I have noticed in regard to the Democrats and their advocates in the MSM. Thus is the case with Steve Hildebrand, Tom Daschle’s former (?) campaign manager and David Kranz, the Chief political reporter for the Sioux Falls Argus Leader.
On May 26, 2005, David Kranz used his column to provide Steve Hildebrand with a platform to justify his efforts to discredit John Thune:
Responding to questions about his postelection actions, Hildebrand told Roll Call that Democrats will monitor Thune in the Senate.
"There are people with progressive voices in South Dakota who care tremendously about what happens in this state, and if he fails in any way to deliver for this state, we're going to call upon him to explain it to the voters here," Hildebrand said.
Kranz also helped the Democrats deny that their efforts were coordinated in their anti-Thune efforts:
Daschle told Roll Call there is no orchestrated effort against Thune.
"I think it's kinda silly, actually," he said. "I haven't asked anybody (to attack Thune), nor do I know of any coordinated effort. ... What's past is past."
But two years ago when the shoe was on the other foot, David Kranz presented a different story. Here is the sequence of reports and columns the Argus Leader printed that discredited the Daschle Accountability Project as a negative anti-Daschle attack performed by a bunch of political activists that were connected at the hip to John Thune:
- Group seeks $800,000 for anti-Daschle media blitz
That was the headline to an April 28, 2003 front-page-above-the-fold report by David Kranz that first broke the news about the Daschle Accountability Project. Note the reference to "anti-Daschle" and here was the opening paragraph:
Two Sioux Falls political activists are teaming up to raise more than $800,000 to pay for a yearlong media blitz in South Dakota aimed at helping defeat Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle in the 2004 election.
Kranz’s tone was far from presenting a report on a group that is aimed at holding Daschle accountable. And neither was Steve Hildebrand who was quoted:
"In 2002. South Dakota saw several of John Thune’s out-of-state special-interest friends come into the state and run attack ads against Senator Tim Johnson and Senator Tom Daschle, It looks like in 2003, they are again being invited back to attack Senator Daschle," Hildebrand said.
- Republicans disapprove of anti-Daschle ad campaign
That was the title to David Kranz’s May 4, 2003 column. The tone set by the state’s largest paper had even the leadership of the state Republicans running for the hills...as was gleefully reported by Kranz:
I am trying to stay as far away from that as possible," says Randy Frederick, of Hayti, state Republican Party chairman.
"I don't want to get close to those folks because they are so negative, and that is not what the South Dakota Republican Party and I are all about. You can have a good, honest, hard campaign about issues, but you don't have to be caustic."
While the Argus Leader’s reporting buckled the South Dakota Republican leadership, ABC CBS, and CNN were among those that repeated Kranz’s propaganda at the national level. This led the way for the national Democrats to tie in John Thune. On May 14, 2003 the Rapid City Journal reported on this press release:
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee drew former Republican Congressman John Thune into the battle between the nonprofit Sioux-Falls-based Rushmore Policy Council and Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D.
DSCC Chairman Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., issued a news release calling on Thune to "disavow" the Rushmore Policy Council and its ballyhooed "Daschle Accountability Project." Rushmore Policy Council Director Rob Regier and colleague Paul Erickson were in Washington, D.C., last month trying to raise about $1 million to pay for a humorous TV campaign chiding Daschle for his policy positions.
- Democrats link Thune to anti-Daschle ad campaign
That was the headline to the David Kranz report that covered the Corzine press release a full week before the above RCJ piece (May 7, 2003) showing Kranz's eagerness to carry the Democrats' water. Kranz's report included this Corzine quote:
"If he [John Thune] doesn’t [speak out against the plan], he should forgive us if we don’t see it as a coincidence that both he and his close political friends have set up non-profit groups that are nothing more than shell games to advance their political interests, " Corzine said.
Perhaps someone should report the same point in regard to the Democrats’ "South Dakotans United To Protect Social Security" today. Maybe someone should do what Kranz did two years ago.
In his May 11, 2003 column, Kranz announced the entry of Neal Tapio into the 2004 Senate race, and then Kranz tried to create a guilt-by-association connection between the two conservatives he had earlier discredited:
Tapio described himself as a philosophical Republican who is a fiscal and social conservative.
His newspaper ad directs readers to a Web site - sdakotagop.com -where there was once a list of people involved in the project. In addition to Tapio's name, listed as Neal T, others were Paul E., small businessman; Rob R., administrator; Kenyon G., administration; and Grant H., insurance. Last week, all names disappeared.
Their mission statement: "We are an active group of lifelong South Dakotans that are a not-for-profit organization established to promote and defend principled candidates who support the Reagan vision of limited government, free markets, lower taxes, family values, economic growth and a strong national defense."
Daschle's campaign has criticized the sdakotagop.com Web site as an extension of the effort to launch the Daschle Accountability Project forwarded Rob Regier of the Rushmore Policy Council and Paul Erickson. That plan got substantial media coverage around the United States in the last week, but Regier now says they do not plan to implement it.
But wait…Kranz continues:
Now that there is a possible Senate candidate, South Dakota television viewers will also get a chance as early as this week to see some anti-Daschle television commercials.
Club for Growth, visible in the state during the 2002 election cycle with spots criticizing Daschle, are making buys with a new message.
Stephen Moore, head of that organization, came to the state to discuss his plan and sought to recruit members at a gathering in a motel meeting room reserved for Erickson's business.
So David Kranz and Steve Hildebrand had a different take when it was Senator Daschle who was going to be held accountable. Instead Kranz was helping out the Daschle campaign by controlling the political atmosphere by turning any attempt to hold Daschle accountable for the positions he took in DC into a negative anti-Daschle attack by political extremists.
As the picture at the top of this post shows, Kranz was even allowed to discredit Paul Erickson on the front-page of a Sunday edition of the Argus Leader with an exhaustive report that included the sub-headline "Paul Erickson stands up for the Republican right wing".
After witnessing how Kranz helped Tim Johnson in 2002 by using Tony Dean to misinform the masses on the gun issue…and now in 2003, Kranz was preventing conservatives from talking about what Tom Daschle does in DC with regard to important issues…I went to work and began researching Kranz.
Just after becoming the Managing Editor on the Mitchell Daily Republic in 1976, Kranz wrote a column bragging about his college days with Tom Daschle. On May 29, 2003 I made this revelation known by posting it:
In a 9/4/1976 column in the Mitchell Daily Republic, Dave Kranz announced:
More familiar faces are returning from other parts of the country to South Dakota. Tom and Laurie Daschle, aides to Sen. James Abourezk in Washington have been reassigned to Abourezk’s Sioux Falls office.
Daschle is formerly of Aberdeen and his wife is the daughter of PUC commissioner Mrs. Norma Klinkel. We went to college with Daschle at South Dakota State University and worked together on a mock political convention.
Daschle masterminded one of the most successful participation events by students of an unrequired nature when he headed the political science department’s convention project. Well over 650 students got involved in the event which was patterned after the Democratic convention that year because of the general interest.
I remember our tireless search to find a renowned public speaker to address the convention such as McGovern, McCarthy, Humphrey or some other prominent Democrat. With no takers, we finally found a popular young state senator from Salem to address the group. His name was Richard Kneip.
After that revelation, David Kranz got his wings clipped a little by not being allowed to report on the 2004 Senate race. But his pro-Democrat bias is alive and kicking today. Kranz is not calling Hildebrand a far-left Democrat operative spearheading an anti-Thune attack campaign funded by Daschle’s out-of-state special interests. Kranz is not going into all the Daschle staffers who are involved in a cabal with Hildebrand featured on the front-page of a Sunday Argus Leader as the Democratic left winger out to get the guy from Murdo, South Dakota.
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