Hard to believe this is the lead item this morning in the report from WisPolitics.com ..
Scott Walker’s guv campaign is demanding Wisconsin TV stations take down an ad from Dem rival Tom Barrett, saying it falsely attributed a negative spot to the county exec
Of course Walker wants Barrett to take down his commercial. And Barrett would like Walker to take down his misleading commercials. And Russ Feingold would like Ron Johnson to take down his. Ditto Johnson re: Feingold's spots. Et cetera ad infinitum.
Not gonna happen.
As the Walker campaign well knows -- and as WisPolitics should know, if it doesn't -- is that political commercials, paid for by campaigns, cannot be censored by the stations. The stations are required to run them, as is.
When Walker's spots lie about his record as Milwaukee County executive, the commercials runs the way his campaign produces them. If his opponents don't like it, they can complain to the news media, which they often do, or run their own commercials to counter it.
That's the way it works. It allows campaigns with more money to drown out the other side, of course, and it makes it very difficult to set the record straight when someone like Walker makes a false claim.
But the rules are the rules, and they are not likely to change any time soon.
Walker's phony letter to the stations is worthless, unless the news media are gullible enough to report on it, which may be the case.
And despite all of his protests, Walker says the same things about Barrett that the Republican Governors Assn. says in its commercial.