May 7, 2009

A busy Twitter account of undisclosed sponsorship has been beaming out messages with texts like "Join @newtgingrich @sanuzis in signing the EFCA Freedom Not Fear petition at ...[URL]" Unwary fans of Republican leaders Newt Gingrich and Saul Anuzis who click through and sign are in fact signing a pro-union group's petition in favor of EFCA, a position of course strenuously opposed by Gingrich and Anuzis. [The Hill; incidentally, Point of Law can itself be found on Twitter at @pointoflaw]

This strikes me as a really counterproductive tactic to use in support of the card-check bill, above all because it will tend to remind people of the many attested instances in which organizers have gotten unwary workers to sign union-authorization cards by leading them to believe they're signing something entirely different. And if people think too much about those instances, they're likely to be even less keen on replacing secret ballots with "sign here" card procedures, don't you think?

P.S. One Twitter user associated with the SEIU does not seem terribly outraged by the tactic. Mickey Kaus calls the scam "eerily appropriate".

P.P.S. Welcome Instapundit readers. And the SEIU-associated Twitter user mentioned in the P.S. above thinks I have not presented his full position fairly; that complaint and my response are here.