The GOP Movement Against MoveOn
National Journal has partnered with NBC to embed reporters with the campaigns of top presidential contenders and in two key states, Iowa and New Hampshire. This entry has been compiled from last week's reports by the embeds.
Tech Daily Dose will continue to publish technology-related reports from the field. Check back periodically at "Tech Trail 2008" for the latest news.
The decision by the liberal, online activist group MoveOn.org to criticize the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq via a full-page New York Times advertisement gave Republican presidential candidates an easy target last week. More than one of the candidates took potshots at MoveOn.
In Iowa, National Journal/NBC reporter Carrie Dann said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., visited a Des Moines Veterans of Foreign Wars hall and a Waterloo American Legion chapter to push his support of the Iraq war. The senator was rewarded with applause for his fierce defense of Gen. David Petraeus in the wake of MoveOn's ad. At both events yesterday, he held up an oversized poster of MoveOn's "General Betray Us" graphic, slamming it as "one of the worst things I've seen in my life."
He had tough words for Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, who has stayed mum about the ad. In Waterloo, he challenged Clinton to speak out against MoveOn's message.
New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who took out of full-page ad of his own in response to MoveOn's attack against Petraeus, also blasted MoveOn and others questioning Petraeus, according to National Journal/NBC reporter Matthew Berger.
Clinton was among the people Giuliani specifically criticized. He said he believes Petreaus' report, but even if he didn't, the general was due more respect.
Later in the week while in Atlanta, Giuliani said: "Hillary Clinton, The New York Times, MoveOn.org should apologize for what they did. Their excessive political view led them to character assassination. They should apologize for it. They should stop it and what we should move on with from now on is a civil discourse without name-calling."
National Journal/NBC reporter Adam Aigner-Treworgy, meanwhile, said that while speaking in Jacksonville, Fla., Fred Thompson added a line to his stump speech thanks to MoveOn: "An American hero comes back to give his objective report as the leader of our troops over there, and he's slandered, he's libeled, he's called everything but a traitor, because he's coming back with some good news. A lot of people in Washington don't want to hear good news."
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