{"id":11538,"date":"2007-07-20T16:45:06","date_gmt":"2007-07-20T20:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/11538.html"},"modified":"2007-07-20T16:45:06","modified_gmt":"2007-07-20T20:45:06","slug":"how-not-to-handle-a-political-controversy-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/how-not-to-handle-a-political-controversy-101\/","title":{"rendered":"How Not To Handle A Political Controversy 101"},"content":{"rendered":"

OK, just one more post about Fred Thompson’s lobbying work for the pro-choice National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn. I know I’ve had a few, but this is a good one.<\/p>\n

If you’re just joining us, here’s a quick rundown:<\/p>\n

* The LAT discovered<\/a> that Thompson worked as a lobbyist for the group, pushing a pro-choice position to the H.W. Bush White House.<\/p>\n

* Thompson aides adamantly denied<\/a> the accuracy of the story. “Fred Thompson did not lobby for this group, period,” Thompson spokesman Mark Corallo said.<\/p>\n

* Four days later, Thompson started to equivocate<\/a>, telling right-wing personality Sean Hannity, “You need to separate a lawyer who is advocating a position from the position itself.”<\/p>\n

* Though Thompson’s staff insisted that there are “no billing records” to connect him to lobbying for the group, the NYT reports<\/a> on billing records that connect Thompson to lobbying for the group.<\/p>\n

Late yesterday, a close Thompson insider offered a new defense<\/a> to David Brody, correspondent for TV preacher Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network.<\/p>\n

For what it’s worth, Thompson’s denial was to the allegation the LAT made – that Thompson lobbied Sununu for this group. Period. That was what the LAT claimed they had proof of, and that was what we thought was being denied.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Good heavens. Is Thompson surrounded by crazy people? Or just people who think we’re morons?
\n
\nThe original LAT story explained that the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn. hoped to persuade John H. Sununu, the then-White House staffer. Thompson lobbied for the group, and spoke to the group’s president 22 times about strategy, but there’s some question as to whether Thompson ever spoke to Sununu directly.<\/p>\n

But this whole parsing argument is a bad joke. Thompson’s spokesperson said, “Fred Thompson did not lobby for this group, period.” He couldn’t have been misquoted — he said it in an email. Now, the new spin is that Thompson did not lobby John Sununu<\/i> for this group.<\/p>\n

It’s hard to imagine Team Thompson handling this story any worse. For all of his many, many tragic flaws, George W. Bush’s campaign was usually a pretty tight ship. Thompson hasn’t even announced yet and he’s already screwed up this story in several different ways.<\/p>\n

National Review ran a reasonable editorial<\/a> suggesting the problem here extends from Thompson’s discomfort from having switched from supporting abortion rights to opposing them. Maybe so.<\/p>\n

The solution, then, is having Thompson try telling the truth for a change. It clearly doesn’t come naturally, but he might be surprised at how effective it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OK, just one more post about Fred Thompson’s lobbying work for the pro-choice National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn. I know I’ve had a few, but this is a good one. If you’re just joining us, here’s a quick rundown: * The LAT discovered that Thompson worked as a lobbyist for the group, pushing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}