{"id":8719,"date":"2006-10-11T09:01:44","date_gmt":"2006-10-11T13:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8719.html"},"modified":"2006-10-11T09:01:44","modified_gmt":"2006-10-11T13:01:44","slug":"the-american-spectators-bogus-scoop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-american-spectators-bogus-scoop\/","title":{"rendered":"The American Spectator’s bogus scoop"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s hard to imagine anyone taking a “breaking story” from The American Spectator seriously, but the barely-breathing magazine — or, more accurately, its blog — “reported<\/a>” yesterday that it had learned from Democratic sources that the entire Mark Foley scandal was<\/i> orchestrated by Democrats as some kind of “October surprise.”<\/p>\n

Indeed, to hear the Spectator tell it, there was a grand plan to use the Foley story, which was moved up to accommodate the changing political landscape.<\/p>\n

One of the stories going around Democrat Party circles is that party operatives like Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and American Family Voices weren’t quite ready for primetime with the opposition research materials they had gathered for the 2006 election cycle.<\/p>\n

According to one political consultant with ties to the DNC and other party organizations, “I’m hearing the Foley story wasn’t supposed to drop until about ten days out of the election. It was supposed the coup de grace, not the first shot.”<\/p>\n

So why the rush? According to another DNC operative: bad polling numbers across the country…. So how to remedy? “You pull out the bright shiny things that distract the average American voter away from the issues we all know they care about — national security, anti-terrorism — and focus on the ugly: Foley and Iraq.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The piece claims to cite a Democratic consultant, a DNC “operative,” and a House Democratic leadership aide, all of whom are anonymous, and coincidentally, all of whom use far-right talking points while speaking to a reporter for a far-right magazine. Amazing, isn’t it?<\/p>\n

Indeed, the right-wing noise machine crafted a fictional defense for the Foley scandal a week ago, based on the notion that the entire defense is a Dem plot. Then, wouldn’t you know it, three Dem insiders, who have no incentive to make the party look bad a month before the election, magically come forward to tell The American Spectator that all of the right’s fears are absolutely true. How terribly impressive.<\/p>\n

Does anyone, anywhere, seriously believe this story?
\n
\nFirst, we already know<\/a> Dems weren’t<\/i> behind the story. ABC and The Hill both reported the Foley scoop came from Republican sources, and follow-up reports confirm<\/a> the earlier reports. It’s probably time for the right to give up on the conspiracy theory. Frankly, I’m surprised anyone would think Dems are cunning enough to pull off this kind of stunt anyway.<\/p>\n

Second, if Dem insiders had knowledge of some kind of secret plot that confirmed the right-wing dream scenario, why in the world would they share it — complete with far-right talking points — with The American Spectator?<\/p>\n

And third, let’s not forget that we are talking about The American Spectator<\/i>, which has less credibility on Democratic plots than Donald Rumsfeld does on the war in Iraq. This is, after all, the same magazine that smeared Anita Hill in 1992 with a piece its writer later admitted was fabricated, and smeared Bill Clinton with the trumped up “Troopergate” scandal that has been completely discredited.<\/p>\n

Two weeks into the Foley scandal, this is the best the right came come up with, a transparently ridiculous story in a magazine even leading conservatives describe as “dead<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Sure, Spectator, Dems were behind the whole thing. Sure they were.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s hard to imagine anyone taking a “breaking story” from The American Spectator seriously, but the barely-breathing magazine — or, more accurately, its blog — “reported” yesterday that it had learned from Democratic sources that the entire Mark Foley scandal was orchestrated by Democrats as some kind of “October surprise.” Indeed, to hear the Spectator […]<\/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-8719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8719","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=8719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}