This article first appeared online at The Washington Examiner on November 3, 2011.
Defeating incumbent Democrats is not defamation
By Horace Cooper
A combination of economic discontent and disapproval of President Obama’s health care bill resulted in an electoral rout in 2010, marking a dramatic shift in partisan control.
Democrats suffered a historic defeat, with Republicans gaining 63 seats in the House of Representatives, five seats in the Senate, and six governorships across the nation.
The people had spoken. But rather than graciously concede a tough loss in a tough election year, one ousted one-term Democratic member of the House huddled with his lawyers, looked around for someone else to blame for his defeat, and decided, quite naturally, to sue.
Steve Driehaus formerly a House Democrat from Ohio sued the Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life advocacy group, for defamation that he alleges torpedoed his re-election efforts. Talk about your sour grapes.
During the campaign, the Susan B. Anthony List ran a series of ads and alerts stating “Steve Driehaus voted for taxpayer funding of abortion when he cast his vote for the health care reform bill” — Obamacare.
To this day, Driehaus insists that Obamacare does not pay for abortions and that by saying that it does the Susan B. Anthony List cost him his “job.”
Never mind that Driehaus lost by a seven point margin — a landslide in politics. Never mind that Driehaus voted for an enormously unpopular piece of legislation like Obamacare. Never mind that he voted with his increasingly unpopular party 95 percent of the time.
Never mind that he was defending a Democratic seat in the predominantly Republican area of southern Ohio. Never mind that the House of Representatives just voted this month to amend Obamacare to finally ban abortion funding.
Continue reading at The Washington Examiner.
