Spelling matters, even in politics. So sloppy staffers at the National Republican Senatorial Committee get an "F" for this day-old Metro Detroit billboard.
It's aimed at U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, who hasn't changed the name his parents gave him 60 years ago in Pontiac.
You'd think political pros in Washington, D.C., would know that Michigan's junior senator, a congressman for two years before being elected in 2014 to replace Carl Levin, isn't named Jerry. But in their zeal to lump him with two Democratic presidential hopefuls on the eve of Detroit debates, the operatives dropped their proofreading quality control.
A news release about the Ford Road billboard near Dearborn, quoted by Andrea Perez Balderrama of the Free Press, gets the target's name right as it accuses him of backing a Green New Deal that would "raise the cost of meat consumption."
"Gary Peters' excitement for the 'Green New Deal' may be in line with the radical Democrats on the presidential debate stage, but their plans to tell Michiganders what they can eat for dinner is simply extreme," said NRSC spokesman Nathan Brand in a news release. . . .
The resolution itself . . . only mentions "working collaboratively with farmers and ranchers in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector." No mention of beef, not even cows.
Peters himself did not vote for or against the resolution when it was debated on the Senate floor in February. He simply voted "present."
In other words, it's a bad sign for Republicans in every sense of that phrase.
-- Alan Stamm
