- Jonathan Boncek file photo
- Elizabeth Colbert Busch
Someone from the Congressional campaign of Elizabeth Colbert Busch apparently deleted about 500 tweets from the @ColbertBuschSC account yesterday. Republicans are calling the social-media purge an attempt to mask an über-liberal agenda, while Colbert Busch’s campaign says it was simply an attempt to clean up a glut of retweets.
You be the judge. Here’s a sampling of tweets that disappeared from the account:
• RT @Observer2isback: A Vote for Elizabeth Colbert-Busch is a vote for Wind Energy. http://t.co/zgF2lw1ghL via @dailykos @StephenAtHome @ …
• Thank you!! RT @AFGEPILocal1951: Having a great time phone banking @ColbertBuschSC campaign headquarters In Bluffton SC
• RT @ChasCityPaper: Tara Servatius: “Is Charleston becoming an economic powerhouse?” http://t.co/RYgHUbsPeB #chs #sctweets
• RT @GOPANTIUSA: GOP LOGIC: Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism.
• RT @BluSouthProject: @buntingd he just seems so ideally suited to the role. Love the modesty and focus on the poor. My #HopeForThePope g …
• “You could power America with renewables… The biggest obstacles are social & political” Mark Z. Jacobson http://t.co/xrP001odp3 #sc1 #chs
• RT @TonyEquality: It’s Not Holy to Hate. Happy Easter. #LGBT #Gay #MarriageEquality
• @CaitlinAburrow Both pro choice and in favor of marriage equality.
• RT @LOLGOP: Isn’t it cute when the party that wants to tell you when to give birth and whom to marry thinks it’s for smaller government?
• @LiberalCap Thank you for the support! #UniteBlue
You can find the full list of deleted tweets on Politwoops, a service of the nonprofit Sunlight Foundation. According to an analysis by the Foundation, many of the tweets are replies thanking voters for their support, while others include “mentions of the fundraising firms assisting her, digs on Republican ideology, and responses sharing her beliefs.”
Colbert Busch, the Democratic nominee in the May special election for South Carolina’s District 1 Congressional seat, drew criticism from the left early in her campaign for being vague about her platform. She released her official platform in early March — about two weeks before the Democratic primary.
James Smith, Colbert Busch’s communications director, says deleting the tweets was a housekeeping matter, not an image makeover. He points out that all of Colbert Busch’s press releases about endorsements are still visible on her campaign website. “This is just cleaning up,” Smith says. “The followers were saying they can’t find anything about events and fundraisers on there. I think the ratio was about eight retweets to one from us.”
But the National Republican Congressional Committee smells a pinko. In a press release sent out this morning, NRCC spokeswoman Katie Prill has this to say:
Now it looks like this self-proclaimed ‘life-long Democrat’ is realizing she is running in South Carolina and not liberal San Francisco because just yesterday her Twitter account went on a mass purge of her extremely liberal tweets … Elizabeth Colbert Busch is trying to back track on her liberal Obama rhetoric, but South Carolina families know if she goes to Congress she’ll be a loyal soldier to Nancy Pelosi.
Republican hopefuls Curtis Bostic and Mark Sanford are in a primary runoff today. A search for deleted tweets from either candidate comes up with only one, in which Sanford retweets a word of support from Sydney Cade West, a self-proclaimed “Conservative, Political Junkie, Author of gritty Romance novels,” according to her Twitter bio.
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