In the race to the bottom event known as South Carolina's First Congressional District special election, Mark Sanford has defeated Elizabeth Colbert Busch.
Not that the establishment press didn't try to help Ms. Busch, to whose background they gave little or no scrutiny. And when two forms of scrutiny did arrive from independent quarters, first of her actual beliefs expressed in tweets before she or someone associated with her deleted them, and then this weekend of her past jailing on contempt charges during a messy divorce, they chose to ignore it.
The early April memory-hole treatment -- "or perhaps tweetment" -- of Colbert-Busch's previous tweets was reported by Tara Servatius at the Charleston City Paper on April 17 as a result of work done by the Sunlight Foundation (HT Fits News; bolds are mine throughout this post):
Colbert Busch's deleted tweets reveal her true self
Who is the real Elizabeth Colbert Busch? It appears she comes in two versions, one of which her campaign staff is desperately trying to delete before voters in the District 1 Congressional race go to the polls May 7.
They've gone so far as to decimate part of her Twitter account, wiping out 500 tweets she sent before she became the painfully bland, utterly "moderate" businesswoman you see every five minutes on television in campaign ads so mind-numbingly dull that if you played them in a loop while driving, you'd crash.
... But Elizabeth 1.0, the author of those deleted tweets, which were saved and archived by the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation, bears little resemblance to the woman in the campaign's jobs ads. Her greatest passion, given the number of times she tweets about it, isn't jobs at all, but gay marriage and equal rights for homosexuals.
... On Twitter, Elizabeth 1.0 is also passionately pro-choice, backed President Barack Obama's plan to raise the minimum wage, and has openly mocked the GOP's unwillingness to socialize medicine. "GOP LOGIC: Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism," she tweeted.
... The deleted tweets aren't the only place you can catch a glimpse of Elizabeth 1.0. In a video of her speaking to union leadership captured by Patch.com, the boring business mom from the TV ads doesn't mention her zeal for business at all. Instead, she leaves the room with the impression that she was going to Washington to fight for ... unions. Passionately. "The voices of the union and all unions need to be lifted up," she says in the video.
... Bottom line, Elizabeth 1.0, the deleted version, is a hard-core liberal Democrat.
If she wins, you have to wonder which Elizabeth will go to Washington.
For now, and maybe forever, we won't have to find out.
Oh, that comtempt charge? Here the story on that from Fits News:
SO HERE’S ELIZABETH COLBERT-BUSCH’S MUG SHOT
DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE'S 1988 ARREST PHOTO SURFACESThus far South Carolina’s topsy turvy first congressional district special election has been a referendum on the personal life of former S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford. Dominating the headlines? His 2009 fall from grace as well as the more recent trespassing allegations leveled against him by his ex-wife, former S.C. First Lady Jenny Sanford.
The great ‘undiscovered country?’ His Democratic opponent, Elizabeth Colbert-Busch (who to her discredit has gone to some lengths to inhibit said discovery).
The Democrat apparently wants voters to elect her, before they find out what she believes,” Breitbart’s Mike Flynn recently wrote.
... Colbert-Busch was also involved in a messy divorce, one that landed her in jail on contempt of court charges in 1988. Now – just days before she and Sanford face voters in an extraordinarily close race – a mug shot of Colbert-Busch’s 1988 arrest has surfaced.
Take a look ...
The mug shot is at the link.
Those arguing that going back 25 years was unfair would have a point -- if Colbert Busch hadn't tried to make the campaign solely about Sanford's sordid situation four years ago. But she did, making it fair game. Sorry, Lizzie.
If one can believe the polls in races such as this -- a highly questionable proposition, to be sure -- it may be that the late-breaking news of Colbert Busch's jail time turned a race some polls said she was leading by almost 10 points a week ago into a 9-point loss. If so, the establishment press and their attempts at gatekeeping also lost tonight -- bigtime.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
