Remember all those radio and television ads running for over a year supporting immigration "reform" sponsored by a group with the annoyingly deceptive title of "Americans for a Conservative Direction?" They were financed by Obama acolyte and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. However, if you think many people were fooled by those ads you would be wrong according to Jessica Meyer at Politico.
Meyer describes how naive Zuckerberg has been in his attempt to fool conservatives into actually believing that his organization is on their side. He apparently thought that an big infusion of Silicon Valley bucks was all that was needed to deceive folks that he politically opposes. The only one really fooled was Zuckerberg himself. Not only has he completely wasted millions of dollars, he is continuing to fool himself by throwing good money after bad as described by Meyer:
Mark Zuckerberg’s immigration reform push had all the capital, connections and star power to merit success.
But not even Silicon Valley could make this investment — and the Facebook founder’s first foray into national politics — pay off.
Tech leaders poured millions into FWD.us, 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. It galloped into the debate with the tech industry’s classic certainty but wound up facing the same obstacles that have halted reform for decades.
Now, as hope for an overhaul fades, the group must reconcile Silicon Valley’s highflying ambition with the sobering lessons of Washington.
...FWD.us spent about $5 million on TV and radio ads in the lead-up to last year’s Senate vote, which resulted in the passage of an immigration overhaul. Along with its affiliates, Americans for a Conservative Direction and the Council for American Job Growth, the group has continued to run six-figure ads either praising conservative backers or touting the imperative for reform.
The funny thing is that liberal groups were so intolerant of conservatives that they couldn't even maintain a short term pretense of conservatism for the sake of passing an immigration bill with amnesty as the goal.
FWD.us lurched soon after it launched. The group nettled many of its own members with TV ads that emphasized the conservative credentials of some immigration reform advocates. One ad for South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham — an instrumental figure in the Senate bill’s passage — touted his support for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline and opposition to Obamacare. Yet another praised Alaska Democratic Sen. Mark Begich, a reform supporter, for backing oil drilling in the Arctic.
Liberal groups pulled ads from Facebook, while Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk and David Sacks, chief executive of social networking company Yammer, cut ties.
FWD.us stood by its strategy, but the ads haunted the fledgling organization, which hoped to strike a bipartisan tone but wound up losing some liberal backers. Future ads heaped praise on Republicans for passing House immigration principles and then pressured them when the window for action narrowed.
The group hosted rallies with evangelicals and farmers. It drew conservative leaders to roundtables, held press events in key districts and created an app that facilitated interaction with lawmakers. It appeared, at times, to lack a cohesive plan.
So not only were liberals too unsubtle to contain their antagonism towards conservatives even briefly for strategic reasons but conservatives such as Eric Ericson at Red State were laughing from the get go back in April 2013 at Zuckerberg's clumsy attempt to fool conservatives:
I just want to be clear about about the new front group for the Gang of Eight’s immigration proposal on the right, Americans for a Conservative Direction.The group, funded by Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, is perfectly entitled to set up this group. A good bit of the center-right coalition supports the issue.That’s not my problem. My problem is that this is just another example of Republican consultants seemingly bleeding people dry for crappy work product.They call themselves Americans for a Conservative Direction, but one of their first ads is a poorly produced ad supporting Lindsey Graham, who is not exactly a stalwart of the conservative movement these days.Their website is poorly produced — more an alpha launch than a beta launch. Even the Marco Rubio advertisement, which is airing in Texas today, is poorly produced.Both of them have Methuselah as the narrator and they look cheap.If Zuckerberg wanted to do a low cost PAC to support an issue he cares about, that’s all well and good. But to look cheap and to be politically tone-deaf on the Lindsey Graham issue while calling the group Americans for a Conservative Direction is just pathetic.My guess is that the consultants involves saw just another way to make a quick buck without a lot of energy, thought, or effort. ...looks more like Republican consultants finding another sucker in Mark Zuckerberg to bleed dry.
The good news for Republican consultants is that, according to Politco, they can continue to bleed Zuckerberg dry:
FWD.us wouldn’t let go. The group commissioned polls last month that showed support for reforms in Cantor’s district and spent $250,000 on cable ads intended to nudge House Republicans. Several weeks later, Obama conceded defeat on near-term legislative reform and announced he would turn to executive actions.
No word yet as to Zuckerberg's opinion on the current border crises but Laura Ingraham has noted that he doesn't hesitate to secure the borders around his home.
HIS BORDERS! "[Zuckerberg] wants to be able to control how the prop's surr. his home are mkted who they're sold to." http://t.co/utZEwOPosc
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) July 2, 2014
