The Republican National Committee is capitalizing on the Obama administration’s bad week with a new fundraising appeal that complains the president isn’t living up to the standard of government transparency he promised to bring to Washington.
The RNC video, “Demand Transparency,” points to this week’s three controversies—IRS, DOJ’s secret subpoena, Benghazi—and tells views to “demand the truth” and “demand accountability.”
It paints the president as a hypocrite, and shows clips of Obama as a candidate in 2008 and the newly elected president in 2009, pledging to put a stop to secrecy in government dealings.
“The way to make government responsible is to hold it accountable,” Obama is shown saying in early 2009. “A long time now there’s been too much secrecy in this city.”
The online video ends with a link to “donate,” which leads to the RNC fundraising form.
The president criticized Republicans Monday during a news conference for stirring up controversy over Benghazi to fuel their fundraising efforts.
“The fact that this keeps on getting churned out, frankly, has a lot to do with political motivations,” Obama said.
Republicans have used the Benghazi controversy “for fundraising and frankly, you know, if anybody out there wants to actually focus on how we make sure something like this does not happen again, I am happy to get their advice and information and counsel,” he said.
Jane Timm