July 25, 2012

GOP Candidate: Rep. Keith Ellison Is “Militantly Anti-America”

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.)<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/keithellison/6986678636/sizes/z/in/photostream/">Rep. Keith Ellison</a>/Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Since being sworn in—on Thomas Jefferson’s Koran, no less—as the country’s first Muslim congressman five years ago, Minnesota Democrat Keith Ellison has been a magnet for conservative criticism. Florida Rep. Allen West told an interviewer in 2011 that Ellison, because his faith undermines America’s Judeo-Christian foundation, represents “the antithesis of the principles upon which this country was established.” Just last week, his Minnesota colleague Michele Bachmann accused Ellison of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.

Now, the Republican nominee to take Ellison on in November has gotten in on the action. On Tuesday, Chris Fields, a Marine Corps veteran with no prior political experience, sent out a fundraising appeal asking for help defeating his “militantly anti-America” opponent”:

While I was fighting on a battlefield in Iraq, my opponent was doing everything he could to cut funding for the war and the soldiers fighting it.

Keith Ellison is militantly anti-America. He attacked the Pledge of Allegiance, voted countless times to throw our troops serving in harm’s way to the wolves and teamed up with Barney Frank to destroy the banking industry. Not surprisingly, he’s the proud co-chairman of the radical Congressional Progressive Caucus.

(Emphasis his). Fields doesn’t stand a chance against Ellison; Democrats hold a 22-point edge in the distict and Cook Political Report rates the seat a “solid D.” But he’s still the representative of the state GOP in this race, and was endorsed by the party convention.

On the other hand, it could have been worse. Fields won his party’s nomination by beating Lynne Torgerson, who was running to expose Ellison’s plot to spread Islamic Shariah law. Torgerson blamed Fields’ victory on a plot by Ron Paul activists to take over the state, citing as evidence my 2011 magazine piece on the New Hampshire Free State Project. As Shep Smith said, politics is weird.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate