Posted on 03/23/2005 3:04:41 PM PST by swilhelm73
I wonder if Dan Rather has been practicing his typing?
March 23, 2005
"Talking Points" Story Imploding?
ABC News, the original source of the story on the alleged "GOP talking points" memo now appears to be backing off the story. Blogger Josh Clayborn has been talking to ABC representatives, both on and off the record, and they are now telling him that they never meant to imply that the "talking points" memo originated with the Republicans--only that it was given to some Republican Senators. See his most recent posts at In the Agora.
ABC's current position, as reported by Josh, makes little sense, as their coverage certainly did say that this was a Republican memo. (ABC's website described the memo as containing "GOP talking points.") But the fact that they are now backing off suggests that in reality, they have no idea where the memo came from.
Doubts are starting to appear in other quarters, as well. Just a little while ago, the memo's authenticity was discussed on MSNBC; the fact that bloggers have questioned the memo's provenance was discussed, and at least one guest expressed the opinion that the memo is a Democratic dirty trick.
Finally, we got this email from a staffer for a conservative Republican Senator:
Regarding this phantom “strategy memo” about Terri Schiavo, I can say with almost complete certainty that this memo did not get passed out by Republicans. For starters, nobody up here who knows anything about the Senate refers to last week’s activities as “the Budget Act” (bullet point #2). We didn’t work on the Budget Act last week; we worked on the budget resolution. It may sound like a silly, semantic point to make, but that statement in particular jumped out at me.
Next, there was absolutely no need to take action “before the Budget Act” was pending business. Action could be taken at any time to vote on the Schiavo resolution. In fact, Senators Reid and Frist tried to do exactly that, but were blocked in their request for unanimous consent by Sen. Wyden. On this same note, the budget resolution was “pending business” all week! Debate and votes on the budget resolution began Monday, March 14. Why would we pass out a memo instructing Senators to do something BEFORE the budget resolution was being debated in the middle of debate over the budget resolution? That would be like passing out a memo during the 7th inning of a baseball game instructing us to take batting practice or stretch before the game started. It makes no sense.
I was on and off the Senate floor all throughout the week, including during the Thursday night vote-a-rama. The only piece of literature that I saw being distributed was a simple list of amendments that were being voted on, and it had the Majority Whip’s name on it. No talking points, no summaries – just a simple card with a list of stacked amendments. My boss never received this alleged Schiavo memo. And trust me, given the ideological leaning of my boss, if anybody were to see this memo, it would be him.
I have not talked to any GOP staffers up here who have seen this phantom memo. Nobody I know received any e-mails containing anything even remotely close to this memo. Granted, nothing I have offered is conclusive, but this whole issue really stinks of fraud.
Posted by Hindrocket at 05:33 PM
A Fishy Story Gets Fishier
ABC News and the Washington Post have described--but not actually produced--a memorandum relating to the Terri Schiavo case which they have described as "GOP talking points" that were "distributed only to Republican Senators." Many other news outlets have picked up on ABC's and the Post's reporting, such as this Houston Chronicle article, which relies in part on the memo to support a bitter attack on the Republican Party:
Most interesting is a talking-points memo from the Senate side of the Capitol that spells it right out in stark electoral terms: "the pro-life base will be excited" and "this is a great political issue, this is a tough issue for Democrats."
We have written about the alleged "talking points memo" here, here, and here.
We have expressed skepticism about the authenticity of the "talking points" memo; the most recent developments have only served to heighten our skepticism.
First, an alert reader pointed out that the copy of the memo that was leaked to a left-wing web site does not quite match the "exact, full copy of the document" as quoted by ABC News. ABC News identified four errors in the document, each noted with a (sic). The first such error is in the very first word, a misspelling of Terri Schiavo's name. (Interestingly, ABC did not note as an error the fact that the memo got the number of the Senate bill wrong.) But in the scanned version of the memo itself, as now leaked to the web, three of the four typographical errors have been corrected. So, what is going on? Is the memo now being presented as authentic one that was fabricated or, more likely, cleaned up after the fact?
Second, our Washington sources tell us that a number of Republican Senators say they did not receive, and have never seen, the memo. This contradicts the implication that the memo is some kind of official Republican document that was circulated to all Republican Senators.
Third, the only clear evidence as to the origin of the memo is that it was circulated by Democratic staffers. Tom Maguire, author of Just One Minute, wrote to point out this story from yesterday's New York Times:
As tensions festered among Republicans, Democratic aides passed out an unsigned one-page memorandum that they said had been distributed to Senate Republicans. "This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue," the memorandum said.
So the memo has been traced to a group of Democratic staffers. What evidence is there that its origins go back any farther? None, that we're aware of.
Finally, another reader pointed out the source of much of the suspicious memo: Most of its content comes, word for word, from the web site of the Traditional Values Coalition. See paragraphs four through eight of the memo, which are simply a reproduction, word for word (with a single exception), of points made by the Coalition. Those four paragraphs, however, are not the controversial ones. Whoever created the suspicious memo started with the substantive arguments made by the Coalition, and tacked on the political observations that have created the news story:
This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue.
This is a great political issue, because Senator Nelson of Florida has already refused to become a cosponsor and this is a tough issue for Democrats.
The memo has three possible origins. The first possibility is that it was created by a low-level Republican staffer. This seems possible, but highly unlikely. Only a very dim-witted staffer would 1) copy word for word from the Traditional Values site, 2) get the Senate bill number wrong, 3) make a number of silly errors, including misspelling Mrs. Schiavo's name as "Teri," and 4) mix comments about political advantage into a "talking points" memo. Moreover, the Post and ABC have tried to create the impression that the memo is an official, high-level Republican strategy document. It clearly is not that.
The second possibility is that the memo was created by a lobbying group, presumably the Traditional Values Coalition, since most of the content of the memo comes word for word from their web site. But the controversial political observations--"the pro-life base will be excited," etc.--are inappropriate for an organization like the Coalition. They sound as if they are written from the internal perspective of the Republican party ("this is a tough issue for Democrats").
The third possibility is that the memo is a Democratic dirty trick. At the moment, that looks most likely. It is easy to picture how the document could have been constructed. A Democratic staffer wants to put in some language that will sound authentic for a Republican memo. What does he do? He steals four paragraphs from the Coalition's web site. Then he adds the explosive political observations which are the whole point of the exercise--weirdly out of place in a "talking points" memo, but good politics for the Democrats.
Further, this could explain why the scanned version of the document is different from the one that ABC News originally obtained. The document was apparently corrected in three respects between the time it was given to ABC and when it was leaked to a left-wing web site. Who cleaned up the memo? Presumably the person or persons who created it. The site that put up the jpeg of the memo said that "a source on Capitol Hill...leaked" it to them. The source was presumably a Democratic staffer. If the document was a genuine Republican memo, would the Democrat who leaked it onto the web take the trouble to re-create it, correcting typos? No. The leaker would only correct errors if he himself was the source of the memo.
And finally: as the New York Times has reported, the only people who have actually been seen passing out the memo are Democratic aides.
The evidence we have so far is not conclusive, but it points in the direction of a dirty trick by the Democrats. The onus is certainly on Mike Allen of the Post and ABC News, if they actually have evidence that the memo is genuine, to tell us what that evidence is. In any event, however, the suggestion that this is some kind of high-level Republican strategy memo is ludicrous.
That won't stop the Democrats from trying to make political hay out of it, however. The same left-wing site that published the memo now says:
Hoping to determine who distributed talking points to GOP senators on how they could capitalize on the Schiavo tragedy, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) will send a letter to the Rules Committee today calling for an investigation. Reports suggest the points could have been circulated on the Senate floor, violating Senate Rules....
Are the Democrats moving to capitalize on their own hoax?
Posted by Hindrocket at 03:10 PM
Dan Rather is now a consultant in the Product Development Dep't. at Kinkos.
I was wondering if they checked Kennedy's computer? Or maybe Durbin,Schumer,or Cantwell.Not to forget Leaky Leahy.
These guys seem as capable of producing such phony memos
as Dan Blather.
ABC, Washington Post? Isnt this nice of them to donate their scalps to us?
If conservatives put out phony "talking points" and tried to attribute them to dems, the press would catch it.
ABC and CBS aren't going to trumpet something that makes dems look silly, or selfish, or base. Nope. They don't make that mistake. But us? We're the "other". And it's easy to do it to the "other".
Why does ABC want us to live up to their crazy stereotype? What's in it for ABC, CBS or CNN? They maintain the stereotype because if the stereotype's not true, then they're jerks. Biased jerks. And their subconscious doesn't want to face that.
ABC will do whatever it takes to make us "deserve" the unfairness they hand out. The alternative -- that they (the news people of ABC, CBS, NBC) would be forced to see that they're narrow minded and biased is worth every defense mechanism they can muster. And muster they do.
Every time a negative story about conservatives is shown to be a lie, they quickly "move on". It's a mistake they say -- only they don't make the same "mistakes" with liberals. It's like a store that always overcharges but never undercharges. Or an insurance company that overbills by "accident" but never underbills by accident. And why do they delude themselves? What's in it for them? Everything. When presented with information that feeds their self serving image of conservatives, they jump on it. It's why all the stories that trash a political group and later turn out to be lies are against conservatives.
Germans did the same thing to Jews before WWII. You can't trash a group without trying to make it look like they deserve it. It's a creepy tradition. One the ABC and others should avoid.
If conservatives put out phony "talking points" and tried to attribute them to dems, the press would catch it.
ABC and CBS aren't going to trumpet something that makes dems look silly, or selfish, or base. Nope. They don't make that mistake. But us? We're the "other". And it's easy to do it to the "other".
Why does ABC want us to live up to their crazy stereotype? What's in it for ABC, CBS or CNN? They maintain the stereotype because if the stereotype's not true, then they're jerks. Biased jerks. And their subconscious doesn't want to face that.
ABC will do whatever it takes to make us "deserve" the unfairness they hand out. The alternative -- that they (the news people of ABC, CBS, NBC) would be forced to see that they're narrow minded and biased is worth every defense mechanism they can muster. And muster they do.
Every time a negative story about conservatives is shown to be a lie, they quickly "move on". It's a mistake they say -- only they don't make the same "mistakes" with liberals. It's like a store that always overcharges but never undercharges. Or an insurance company that overbills by "accident" but never underbills by accident. And why do they delude themselves? What's in it for them? Everything. When presented with information that feeds their self serving image of conservatives, they jump on it. It's why all the stories that trash a political group and later turn out to be lies are against conservatives.
Germans did the same thing to Jews before WWII. You can't trash a group without trying to make it look like they deserve it. It's a creepy tradition. One the ABC and others should avoid.
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