Facebook
Fark
Digg
Reddit
Stumble
By Anjeanette Damon (contact) 
Monday, Oct. 15, 2012 | 2 a.m.
Editor’s note: Line of Attack is a weekly feature in which we parse a political attack, looking at the strategy behind it, how the campaign is delivering it and what facts support or refute it. We’ll assign it a rating on the fairness meter: Legit, Eye Roll, Guffaw, Laughable or Outrageous.
Attack: Millionaire Shelley Berkley flits around Europe, shopping, drinking Champagne and going to the opera while sticking taxpayers with the bill.
Method of delivery:This new ad from the National Republican Senatorial Committee features comical cartoons and depictions of Berkley.
Strategy: Republicans have already laid the groundwork for convincing voters that Berkley has tried to enrich her family through the policies she advocated in Congress—charges the House ethics committee is looking into and that she vehemently denies. So painting her as a millionaire who is capricious with tax dollars plays into that wheelhouse.
Fairness meter: As with most of ads, there is an element of truth to this attack. Berkley and her family are indeed rich. One of the richest members of Congress, even. But that on its own doesn’t make her ineligible for office. (Mitt Romney would be in a heap of trouble if that were the case.)
The more serious charge relates to a 2008 trip Berkley and her husband took to Slovenia and Italy.
She was part of a delegation with 16 other lawmakers as part of the Transatlantic Legislators Dialogue. And taxpayers did pay for it. Newspapers at the time mocked some of the extravagance on the fine hotels and restaurants listed on the itinerary.
“Your hardy band of lawmakers, led by Rep. Shelley Berkley, co-chairman of the TLD, will ease up on Sunday, starting with a ‘short walking tour of old city’ at 10 a.m., followed by a 45-minute boat trip on the Ljubljanica River and a cable ride up to Ljubljana Castle. But then it's back to a grueling three hours of chat about the Middle East and such,” a Washington Post columnist wrote.
The extravagance question is more than legitimate when tax dollars are concerned. Another legitimate questions is why Berkley and her husband met with a prominent lobbyist while on the trip.
Berkley, in an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, admitted that she built free time into the itinerary, which also included meeting with American troops, wreath laying and briefings on such things as liquefied gas and global warming.
But as most ads do, this one stretches reality in order to drive home a point.
Berkley paid for the opera herself, she said. The delegation received steeply discounted rooms at the fancy hotels.
And the $55,000 price tag featured prominently in the ad? That’s not for Berkley and her husband. It’s for the entire delegation.
Therefore, the ad itself is extravagant, and earns itself an Eye Roll.
In 2008, Las Vegas had 67,223 foreclosures (Source LVSUN 1/23/2009). So Berkely's answer to 184 people PER DAY losing their homes was to go to an opera in Italy?
The equivalent of a small sized Nevada city gets wiped out and Berkley is schmoozing with campaign donors at - not Las Vegas hotels - but in posh Eurupean ones?!?
Looks like all this Congress business takes up too much of her time so we need to free her up so she can travel and schmooze full time.
Let's NOT put Harry Reid II in the U.S. Senate.
Guess she likes spending your tax payer dollars. I STILL keep getting those glossy campaign flyers she sends out.....and I live in Illinois. Makes me wonder if I'm still on the voter rolls in Las Vegas.....
The Republicans are doing an artful job lying, I mean selling their candidates, this election cycle.
The RNC's message this year really should be something like this:
"Hey, we might have really hurt the country doing our best to get Obama out of office, but once he's gone you can completely trust us to turn everything around!"
OK. So let me get this straight. The entire cost to the taxpayer was 55K. I'd love to know what the cost to the campaign to produce and air the misdeed was. Somehow i get the feeling that if the total ad costs were revealed they would put things in a different perspective...
So let me get this straight. While on an official business trip, Berkely splurges on a night at the opera at her own expense. And how is this wrong???
That's like having the RNC here in Las Vegas and demanding that NONE of the elected officials visit any local attractions.
Come on people, are you that naive to believe all these campaign ads.
Speaking of Senators and Representatives traveling world wide on our dime(s), tell them to STAY HOME. It is NOT worthwhile for us to finance numerous trips for them to Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. They need to stay home and get THEIR WORK DONE--starting with an annual budget. Federal agencies are hampered and they jet off to every warm spot they can think of.
@2bxx so do you think that the $55k cost to the taxpayers is alright? Costs to the campaign differ greatly than the cost to the taxpayer.
The hotel was $623 a night (that was after it was heavily discounted) which included $400 a night for the room and $223 a day for meals.
She also had an fancy dinner with a lobbyist which generally is prohibited on such trips.
She said all that they talk about was the weather, how nice Italy was and good the food was one. No lobbying occurred. (LOL)
This woman and her husband are extremely rich.
They make a ton of money off medicare and medicaid with their kidney dialysis business.
That is the same business she protected by placing direct pressure on government officals not to cut payments to kidney dialysis businesses and that is in addition to her co-signing a letter to support regulations to protect payments kidney dialysis businesses.
She could care less about the taxpayers.
She wants to stay rich off the taxpayeres.