This is being done under the pretense of encouraging left-wing merry pranksters to goof on “a Republican in their lives”. Keith Koffler of White House Dossier reported:
The Obama presidential campaign is launching an effort to collect Republican email addresses by inviting its supporters to submit information about their Republican associates to the Obama 2012 website.
***
From the Obama website:
Who inspires you to give?
This holiday season, we’re giving you a chance to have a little fun at the expense of a Republican in your life by letting them know they inspired you to make a donation to the Obama campaign.
Simply enter their name and email address below. Then, we’ll send them a message letting them know they inspired you to donate.
Thank you for supporting this campaign, and happy holidays.
Important: By making a donation today, you’ll be automatically entered for a chance to have dinner with Barack and Michelle Obama. By clicking on the “Submit” button below or otherwise participating in the promotion, you agree to be bound by these Official Rules and represent that you satisfy all of the eligibility requirements.
The effort is being supported by emails from the campaign to members of the vast Obama 2012 email list urging them to participate.
One message, from Deputy Campaign Manager Julianna Smoot, also invites donors to buy something from the Obama 2012 store for their Republican friend.
Really want to fire up your GOP friends? Buy them a gift from the 2012 store. I recommend the birther mugs — they get the message across pretty well.
Okay - what message are they trying to get across? That they’re total, classless douchebags? Not only the Obama Camp, but the drones who would, instead of taking a break from politics, take this bait, and use the holidays to make the Republicans in their lives sick to their stomachs? (Not kidding. If I got an email like that from the White House I would feel like vomiting). Who thought up this vile idea, and did the President himself, really sign off on it?
Campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt, responded in an email to Politico 44 to Koffler’s post:
“The tin foil hat can be taken off — these email addresses are not stored.”
I’m beyond caring what the regime does with our emails. Scores of conservatives have already turned themselves in at Attackwatch. What are they going to do?
But I do care that the President of the United States thinks it’s cute to cause fellow Americans distress at Christmastime by inspiring supporters to donate to his reelection campaign in their names, putting them on the WH spam list.. It’s not cute, and it’s not funny. Family members will fight and friendships will be lost over this. What person in their right mind would do something like this to someone they like? Wouldn’t it have to be someone they don’t like? So the Obama camp is purposefully egging on their followers’ basest instincts to hurt people during the holidays?
Whatever – it’s purposely divisive and it will cause additional stress to many people who already are feeling stressed out this holiday season.
Have we ever seen anything like this at this level of politics, before?
MORE:
A former Obama supporter comments at White House Dossier:
allen December 14, 2011 at 10:38 am
I received an email from barackobama.com suggesting I give to the campaign and then provoke my conservative friends by telling them I gave it in their honor. Talk about goading people into anger. Does he want to deepen the division between the parties and ensure we have the same conflict in our social lives? #confusedformersupporter
Exactly what he’s doing.
I suspect this commenter is a lawyer:
Rob December 14, 2011 at 3:49 pm
It’s certainly in a very gray legal area. It’s one thing to get names off of voter rolls. It’s quite another to ask people to sign up others without their consent. Yes, people send e-cards to each other through on-line services so I suspect that would be the argument here. However, intent is commonly invoked in the interpretation of the law and the intent here is spelled out quite clearly: “[H]ave a little fun at the expense of a Republican in your life…”
They’re basically advocating harassment by signing up people to receive something they didn’t consent to. Orwellian concerns aside, this form of incitement by the administration is beyond the pale.
A few more:
Dave December 14, 2011 at 10:46 am
A dark time in America. I’ll be glad when it’s over.
***
Any of my Democrat “Friends” sign me up to get email from the Obozo and I’ll sign them up for a porn susbscription, militia subscription, (and the list will go on) in a heartbeat.
Yep. I’m keeping that in mind if it happens to me.
Why is it that everything this administration does vis-a-vis the internet always comes across as creepy and disturbing?
Actually – vis-a-vis everything this administration does creeps me out.
UPDATE:
Did we not say creepy? Yes – and a Republican congressman adds tricksy, too:
The Hill: Republican says it’s ‘creepy’ Obama campaign requesting GOP email addresses:
A House Republican thinks it’s a little “creepy” that President Obama’s reelection campaign is offering donors a chance to enter the email addresses of Republican friends.
Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) tweeted Wednesday: “Obama campaign asking for donors to give them GOP email addresses. Tricky, yes. Creepy, definitely.”
***
Ben LaBolt, the Obama campaign’s press secretary, tweeted later on Wednesday that “the email addresses are not stored.”
In response to the controversy, he referred to popular paranormal crime-solving TV show “The X-Files,” tweeting: “The tin foil hats can be retired, and Mulder and Scully can stand down.”
Okay everybody needs to “stand down” on this lest they be ridiculed by Obama’s press hacks. {{{{tinfoil-hat birthers}}}}
Because it’s perfectly normal for a President of the United States to turn its citizens against each other. Nothing to see here.
RELATED CREEPINESS:
Via Weasel Zippers: Obama Campaign Secretly Data Mining Voters: “Microlistening”…
The Obama campaign is guarding the details of the operation like the political equivalent of nuclear secrets: “I’ll be happy to discuss what we’re doing after we do it,” said David Axelrod, Obama’s chief political strategist.
Gosh, that’s a lot like Nancy Pelosi’s, “we have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.”
“The things we did in 2008 in many ways were prehistoric by contemporary standards,” Axelrod said at a Dec. 7 Bloomberg View lunch. “There’s a lot you can do in the way of more finely targeting voters so they’re getting information that’s useful to them.”
If this means an end to Axelrod’s insufferable astroturfers that would be a blessing.
Micro Campaign
St. Clair and his team are creating tools to connect with people properly. For example, disenchanted voters are wooed, not hit up for money. They call it microlistening.
Other hints can be gleaned from an Obama campaign job posting that Gage, now consulting for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, took note of last spring recruiting “quantitative analysts.”
“The Obama for America analytics department analyzes the campaign’s data to guide election strategy and develop quantitative, actionable insights that drive our decision- making,” it says. “We are a multidisciplinary team of statisticians, mathematicians, software developers, general analysts and organizers — all striving for a single goal: re- electing President Obama.”
All striving to fool and manipulate because that’s all he has going for him – the ignorance of the masses.
SEE ALSO:
The American Thinker: Democrats Follow Obama Down the Low Road:
Obama was advised to scare people about Social Security, make them think Republicans are greedy, evil, moronic, “you’re on your own” extremists. The liberal media and pundits are working overtime on the same message. They are thrilled that Obama has changed the topic from the need to lower government spending to the unfairness of income inequality. Of course, Obama promises Democrats that he will raise taxes on only Other People, the undeserving millionaires and billionaires. No one has to do anything hard — the millionaires and billionaires will pay for it all. Nothing has to be cut. Nothing has to change.
I can’t help but smile as I write this. Obama’s ploy is so childish, even ridiculous — and yet it works! I heard each and every talking point coming out of my liberal friends’ mouths. This is the power of leadership. My smile doesn’t last. It hurt me to see a friend’s love for her handicapped child abused, turned into gut-wrenching fear of Republicans — and then to see her gentle face all blurry and distorted with anger, a few inches from mine, as she yells into my face that Republicans want to abandon her child because we’re not willing to pay taxes. In that moment, the potential violence of the OWS crowd became chillingly real.
We are getting toxic leadership from this White House. Obama doesn’t have the power to destroy my old friendship. But he does have the power to destroy our country. Only Democrats can stop him.
Linked by Michelle Malkin, and Jim Geraghty, thanks!
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