Bernie Sanders campaign has been non-stop in their insinuations that Hillary Clinton is bought and paid for. Last night in the debate he was given the opportunity to actually back up his strong talk but couldn’t give a single example of quid pro quo.
But Hillary did.
She spoke about Bernie and his relationship with the NRA. A relationship that is written about in his book and detailed in this article from the Washington Post
www.washingtonpost.com/…
My favorite excerpts for those who don’t want to leave the page…
After Sanders opponent Peter Smith had an epiphany and decided he would no longer do the NRA’s bidding the NRA made him pay..
The NRA made Smith the only incumbent that it actively opposed in 1990. The group eventually spent between $18,000 and $20,000 on advertising and direct mail in Vermont, according to an estimate from the time.
And who who was Smith’s opponent? Bernie Sanders, a man embarking on his 7th try to win a statewide election. But why did the NRA think they had an ally in Sanders?
“Most socialists don’t want to win. Most socialists want to lose, because they can blame it on the system” and justify their decision to remain outside it, Nelson said. “But Bernie wants to win.”
Well hell I can’t blame him for that especially when you’re 0 for 6 but he couldn’t have wanted to win that bad could he? Could he? Please Bernie say it isn’t so….
Sanders won over gun rights groups by promising to oppose one bill they hated — a measure that would establish a waiting period for handgun sales. In Congress, he kept that promise. The dynamic served as an early demonstration that, despite his pure-leftist persona, Sanders was at his core a pragmatic politician, calculating that he couldn’t win in rural Vermont without doing something for gun owners.
Damn. It’s so. But maybe not? Maybe it was just some sort of trick? He took their support but didn’t actually follow through did he?
After he was elected, Sanders stuck to the assurances he had given gun rights groups. In 1991, he voted against a measure that would have required a seven-day waiting period to buy a gun. In 1993, Sanders voted against a broader version of the bill — named for James Brady, the White House press secretary who was shot in the 1981 attempt on President Ronald Reagan’s life — that became law.
That bill set up the national background check system in place today. But Sanders objected because it also included a provision for a temporary waiting period, said Weaver, his longtime aide.
“He had been explicit with people that he would not support a federal mandatory waiting period,” Weaver said. “And he kept his word.”
Since then, Sanders has had a mixed record on guns. He supported an NRA-backed bill to shield gun manufacturers from liability lawsuits. But in 2013, in the aftermath of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, he backed a provision that would have tightened gun laws.
He followed through.
And there you have it. Bernie agreed to vote the way the NRA wanted and in turn it gave him the statewide seat he coveted. I know how I feel about that especially in the context of the campaign he’s currently running but I’ll let you all make up your own minds on the matter.