The Facebook Factor in the GOP's Battle to Take the Senate
Politically active liberal Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook is now blocking Republican candidates from his social media website Facebook in the GOP’s bid to retake control of the U.S. Senate in November. Facebook deleted late Monday night an “Event” this author created to ask for donations to Kevin Wade, running for U.S. Senate as a Republican in Delaware from his 4,937 Facebook friends.
Freshman Democrat U.S. Senator Chris Coons is up for re-election this fall. His approval rating was only at 49% a year ago in September 2013 according to a University of Delaware poll. The year since that 49% approval last September has been extremely bad politically for Democrats, and Coons is in far more trouble than the political class has yet discovered. (The 2010 election was a special election for the last 4 years of Joe Biden’s U.S. Senate seat.)
So adding Delaware to the roster of States that Democrats must defend all at once could increase Republican chances across the country of retaking control of the U.S. Senate. But that means Kevin Wade needs to scramble to raise at least a million dollars through September.
Monday night, Facebook deleted the “Event” this author created: “KEVIN WADE: Don't Hope for Change: Vote for It: $25 from 3,000 for US Senate, Delaware, Republican, by August 20 FEC reporting deadline.” The common function – routinely used by liberals – allows a user to invite his own “friends” (in Facebook terminology) to join in one’s Event. Asking other friends to donate to a cause or a candidate is widely accepted and practiced… but apparently not for Republicans. The “Event” was deleted, meaning that this author’s over 4,937 Facebook friends will not receive this author’s personal invitation for them to donate to Kevin Wade.
There is no appeal or protest mechanism and no explanation. Facebook is nearly impossible for its customers to contact. Family members of deceased persons have complained that they cannot contact anyone to have their loved one’s account de-activated.
Facebook is very commonly used – overwhelmingly by liberals – to promote a “page” or a “group” dedicated to a candidate or campaign, or to hold an “event” for an activity or fund-raising push to benefit candidates. Ron Paul supporters aggressively used such techniques for “money bombs” in which everyone is asked to donate a small amount on the same day. News of an impressive sum donated all on the same day has been an effective technique going back years, particular for the well-organized Paul movement.
Thousands of liberal activists gathered in July for the annual Netroots Nation convention for intensive training to master the skills of internet activism. Conservatives have no parallel to this domination of the internet, with only the Paul movement even trying. However, in delicious irony, Netroots Nation this year was in Detroit – the city liberalism destroyed.
Breitbart warned on June 3 that Mark Zuckerberg was likely to manipulate Facebook to influence tight elections in 2014 in favor of pro-amnesty, mostly Democrat candidates. In the New Republic, Facebook co-founder and former Obama campaign operative Chris Hughes revealed that Facebook actually manipulated voter turn-out in the 2010 elections, increasing targeted voter turn-out by 400,000 votes. That technique centered on influencing Facebook users to vote in response to their friends on Facebook having already voted. Harvard law professor and programmer Jonathan Zittrain then explained with Hughes how Mark Zuckerberg can “use what he calls ‘digital gerrymandering’ to actually tip a tight election” by manipulating the massive Facebook audience. That is, by influencing higher turn-out in favorable locations, Facebook can control the outcome of the 2014 elections.
Since 2010, Mark Zuckerberg and other tech leaders poured over $50 million into FWD.us, as Politico reports “an immigration advocacy group that has dominated ad buys, launched elaborate hackathons and coddled conservatives in an effort to revamp the country’s immigration system. Zuckerberg announced the formation of Fwd.us (pronounced "forward us") in an op-ed article in The Washington Post. FWD.us is led by Zuckerberg’s former Harvard roommate Joe Green. Zuckerberg’s PAC began aggressively attacking Republicans in this year’s election, such as Steve King, reports Newsmax.
Along with the meltdown at the border, the lie is unraveling that high-tech companies need immigration reform to hire high-tech workers. Phyllis Schlafly exposed how Microsoft this year is laying off 18,000 high-tech workers – while giving false testimony under oath to Congress that it needs to hire more foreign high-tech workers because it cannot find enough U.S. citizens to fill those jobs.
Now, very likely frustrated that the voters aren’t buying the job-killing policies they are selling, which will destroy national sovereignty with amnesty, Zuckerberg has now turned to censoring Republican candidates on Facebook.
Whereas Chris Coons’ business experience consists of working for his step-father at WL Gore, having grown up wealthy and privileged, Kevin Wade grew up shoveling coal and achieving success by hard work. Coons became famous in 2010 not only for defeating Christine O’Donnell but for declaring himself to be a “Bearded Marxist” and trashing capitalism and the United States role in the Amherst College newspaper, Amherst Student, May 23, 1985, page 16.
Kevin Wade is a respected Delaware businessman, who started his engineering business around his kitchen table 30 years ago, and is also a co-host of the “Conservative Commandos Radio Show” in Philadelphia on WNJC 1360 AM. He was the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in 2012 against the popular Democrat Tom Carper. Wade just returned from a trip to Israel, promising to tell the story of IDF soldiers on the fence with Gaza back in the USA, and reported live from Israel on the Lars Larson show.
This year, at the last minute, after seeing that neither Christine O’Donnell nor any other well-known candidate was going to run in Delaware as a Republican to challenge the much-weaker Democrat Chris Coons, Kevin Wade was talked into running only on July 8. However, his late candidacy requires scrambling to raise funds and build awareness, because he expected not to be the one to carry the torch.
Christine O’Donnell did not run again for a rematch against Chris Coons because her father died last year after the rigors for her family managing a long decline and Christine has also taken the role of being with her mother getting over the loss while fighting a serious illness of her own as well. Yet the extremely personal nastiness against Christine, especially on Facebook and Google’s YouTube, would have to give any woman pause to wade into that sewer again.
The extraordinarily misogynistic nature of Facebook attacks on Christine in 2010 and even after would utterly astonish most readers here only to see a tiny fraction of it. The infantile nature of social media liberal activism, focused on sexuality and body of conservative women is also off-the-charts from what most conservatives are aware of. However, most of it is still easily found by searching even now. Of course as is typical of liberal activism especially on social media, the attacks on conservative women have no parallel in how a man is treated in either party.
During the 2008 election, Facebook exploded with thousands of “groups” and “pages” promoting Barack Obama and attacking conservatives in juvenile, nasty ways, even with bathroom humor. In fact, ironically, no one was attacked more viciously with personal insults, bathroom humor, slurs, and sexual comments than Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell in 2010.
Social media outlets are dominated by liberals, including to promote candidates for election, but conservatives are slowly starting to catch up. Liberal activists are extremely well-organized and aggressive in their use of the internet. A mediocre YouTube video attacking a conservative candidate will typically see over 10,000 “views” because liberals aggressively “share,” “retweet,” post and repost liberal content, including by linking to liberal messages in their own blogs. A well-done conservative video typically gets 100 to 200 views.
It is especially ironic that after the outrageously misogynistic and insulting treatment of Christine O’Donnell on Facebook, Facebook now censors efforts to raise money to unseat the Democrat Freshman Chris Coons who either benefitted from or whose campaign orchestrated those attacks.