Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Cafaro's Lawyer Can Beat up Your Lawyer

When I had my encounter with Capri Cafaro, she mentioned somewhere in her machine-gun verbal onslaught that she would sue people who misrepresented her past. I thought at the time she was talking about heading off whisper campaigns, getting her lawyer to send cease-and-desist letters in response to actual charges, what have you. I did not think that she would actually issue a broadbanded threat to sue. Hilarious. And no, I didn't know enough to preempt a personal lawsuit when I posted last night.

This is a horrible idea for at least five reasons. More after lunch.

1) It puts a nonissue in the news cycle. In case Capri didn't notice, no one is bringing up the immunity deal except her. It's not in any of the correspondence I've gotten from campaigns. I haven't heard it in anyone's stump. In and eight-member field, everyone is just trying to get noticed (except Sawyer whose apparent strategy is to surprise voters with his appearance on the ballot on election day.)

2) It underscores her political inexperience. There's a reason you haven't seen this before. Nobody ever does it. Kerry could have sued at least some of the Swift Boat Veterans who told actual lies. He didn't because it makes a candidate look weak. Not only does she look week, she looks young.

3) The media will turn. Whether leaning right or left, the media are united in despising any attempt to squelch speech. Kyle in comments mentions that the Beacon Journal seems to like her. I'm pretty confident they won't like this.

4) It makes her look like she has something to hide. It would be one thing if someone had dropped an actual mistatement. It's another to look like you are trying to scare people off the issue altogether. People are going to think some sort of fire is lurking somewhere in all that smoke.

5) It gives her rivals a chance at sympathetic ink. Kucinich and Sutton both get press for reasonable responses to her threat. Not the sort of contrast you want to generate.

NEOBabble is calling her campaign dead based on this. The Chief Source is similarly unimpressed. Dare we say, Kamikaze move?

3 comments:

Jeff said...

She is toast ... TOAST ... T-O-A-S-T!!! This threatening of lawsuits is beyond the last refuge of the desperate, it's totally pathetic.

TOAST!

FamineHorse said...

Well let's hope she is toast because she is the one major Dem in this race who could lose in the general. EVERY Republican I have talked to about this race is licking their chops at a chance to get at SMH. I also know many Dems who will sit the general out, not vote for her, & hope Dems can reclaim the seat in '08 should she win the primary & lose the general.

SMH is a trainwreck for Dems. We at the Billy have been fairly soft on her until now; however, the lawsuit threat is beyond the pail. Anybody but SMH at this point. And I mean anybody.

Jill said...

What I don't like about this tactic is that it's basically a pre-emptive threat against free speech, political free speech at that. If Cafaro trusted the voters, and her own message and her own assertions of what she says is the truth, she wouldn't be so worried that she'd need to threaten others into being quite about even lobbing something that might not be quite right.

I just think that rather than separating her from the bad behavior to which she's been connected in the past, this threat of hers makes her behavior look more in line with the tactics of those bad actors. And of course, she has the money to make it a nightmare for anyone to actually say what she seems to fear others will say.

Very, very worrisome to me.

Being strong and being tough are not necessarily the same at all.