{"id":5162,"date":"2005-09-05T09:41:29","date_gmt":"2005-09-05T13:41:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/5162.html"},"modified":"2005-09-05T09:41:29","modified_gmt":"2005-09-05T13:41:29","slug":"rove-steps-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/rove-steps-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Rove steps in"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, as part of a new White House strategy of shifting blame for the Katrina fiasco onto state and local officials, a “senior Bush administration official” told the Washington Post<\/a> that “as of Saturday, [Louisiana Gov. Kathleen] Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency.” The claim, of course, was completely untrue<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And yet, the lie seems to be making the rounds. Newsweek has now reported<\/a> the same bogus claim.<\/p>\n

It’s tempting to ask why on earth these reporters would publish a lie without doing at least some research to see if it’s true, but the more important question is: who’s lying to reporters (again) at the White House?<\/p>\n

Keep in mind, for political reporters in DC, “senior Bush administration official” doesn’t go to just anyone. It’s a phrase describing a relatively small circle of top White House personnel, which, as Tapped explained<\/a> some time ago, generally includes “the vice-president, the cabinet secretaries, those with cabinet-rank, the chief of staff, maybe the deputy chief of staff, and a couple of other really senior advisors. It’s a fairly limited pool.”<\/p>\n

This New York Times piece<\/a> seems to shed quite a bit of light on the situation.<\/p>\n

Under the command of President Bush’s two senior political advisers, the White House rolled out a plan this weekend to contain the political damage from the administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina. […]<\/p>\n

The effort is being directed by Mr. Bush’s chief political adviser, Karl Rove, and his communications director, Dan Bartlett.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Josh Marshall put it<\/a>, “Add it up.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, as part of a new White House strategy of shifting blame for the Katrina fiasco onto state and local officials, a “senior Bush administration official” told the Washington Post that “as of Saturday, [Louisiana Gov. Kathleen] Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency.” The claim, of course, was completely untrue. And yet, […]<\/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-5162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5162","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=5162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}