Someone following the false messiah creating his own operation chaos.
Posted on 11/10/2008 1:47:10 PM PST by unspun
By now you’ve all heard the Fox News report last week that “unnamed” former McCain advisers leaked that Sarah Palin was confused about whether Africa was a continent, and which countries were in NAFTA. I was perfectly happy staying under the radar as an anonymous source for Fox News‘ Carl Cameron, but now that Palin has accused her accusers of being “unprofessional…jerks…cowards… taking things out of context, and then tried to spread something on national news” and begun to cast doubt on the Fox News report, maybe she’s right to a certain extent. For those of us on the McCain campaign who thought that she acted like a rogue diva and lost John the election, maybe we DO have a responsibility to come out in public. But Sarah… careful what you ask for: some of us may have more to reveal.
So yes, to be clear, last week I was the one who leaked those things to a producer at Fox News who works with Cameron. Carl and his producers are good guys, and I don’t want them to have to worry about protecting their sources (and going through the wringer ala Judith Miller or Matt Cooper) on something like this.
As you know, I was one of the foreign policy advisers on the McCain campaign who worked with Randy Scheunemann to help prep Sarah on her debate with Joe Biden. Did we outright give her a geography quiz when we started the prep? No, of course not. But yes, in the context of the prep, it slowly became apparent that her grasp of basic geo-political knowledge had major gaps. Could she have passed a multiple choice test about South Africa or NAFTA. Probably. But it was clear that she simply didn’t have the ease of knowledge that we come to expect from a major party political candidate. Other slights came up, too: Not knowing the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas. Or the difference between the Shiites and Suni. Or when it came to international terrorist organizations, knowing that the IRA was in Northern Ireland, and ETA in Spain.
The real thing we had to constantly remind her was to never, ever compare herself in any way to Hillary Clinton, as she had at her announcement speech. We had it on good authority that Biden was prepping to unleash the inevitable line, “I know Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is a friend of mine. And Sarah, you’re no Hillary Clinton.” Alas, Biden would have been right.
a) I never believed this crap was true
b) I am disgusted with Fox News for running anonymous gossip
c) I’m convinced this was contrived by Bill O’Reilly to embarrass Gov. Palin so she would be compelled to come on his stinkin’ program and defend herself
d) This phony hoax confession only confirms the above.
Greta Van Sustern has consistently treated Palin fairly and I’m sure her interview tonight will be more of the same.
Here’s the deal: Use her www.gretawire.com blog to show your support and to force O’Reilly and Cameron to tell what they know.
It will be SWEET if Gretas ratings top O’Bloviators tonight!
Someone following the false messiah creating his own operation chaos.
Major, MAJOR a-hole.
My first guess is that this is some kind of Zelig or Trebitsch-Lincoln type. But who knows.
Anyway, it is nice to have some fun again - after the awful election results.
Take care,
/SB
They used that nitwit, Carl Cameron. Can you conceive of anyone on this planet who'd be easier to dupe?
This whole assault was a "Divide & Conquer” tactic by the Obama people when we on the Right were most vulnerable - after the election loss.
Sorry so many fell for it.
So did "Marty" also hoax Carl Cameron and FoxNews so that the entire story is without substance (as it always appeared to be)????
Pretty well done. The hoaxer (or hoaxers) are probably rolling on the floor laughing right now.
Thank you very much for your detailed reply. Boy, did this thread explode. All I know is that Fox blew it and lost a loyal watcher, at least up until a month of so ago, and more importantly, my satellite company lost a paying customer. Now it’s really hard for me to keep up with Fox or CNN or MSNBC has to say.
Makes Free Republic that much more important.
They were scammed. They’re never gonna come clean.
Obama’s people were behind this.
And it's embarrassing how many FReepers fell for it and grabbed their guns to form a circular firing squad instead of training them on the real enemy - Obama!
It’s a three-fer for whatever leftist scum launched this hoax:
(1) they get to attack Palin and McCain most viciously and get the lies repeated widely
(2) they get to crush the credibility (such as it is) of Fox News as the hoax is exposed (did Carl Cameron rely primarily upon an unknown “anonymous source” who went through his producers, and then receive feeble “confirmations” from a couple of real RINOs who didn’t like Sarah Palin??)
(3) they get to focus the Mediascum on this rather than on anything substantive about Governor Palin for days and/or weeks......
So is this guy also the source of the Sarah-Palin-was-punk’d-by-Canadian-DJ? You know...where she was supposedly tricked into thinking she was talking to Sarkozy? My very liberal brother is throwing that one up in my face.
I agree with most of what you are saying. I too never believed Governor Palin did not know what countries belonged to NAFTA or that thing about Africa. However, I was afraid that there were real “leaks”, ie malicious slander, coming from the RINO camp. Now I’m not so sure any longer. It may be that a whole bunch of “elite journalists” (the oxymoron of the day) have been taken in by a complete fraudster.
Wouldn’t that be a hoot?
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The bigger, more important question is this:
Was “information” from the “Marty Eisenstadt” the main source of Carl Cameron’s story as well??
IF this hoaxer is the one that put Cameron onto the “story” in the first place, then Cameron easily could have gotten 2-3 lukewarm non-specific “confirmations” ala “yeah, we RINOs never did like Sarah Palin” etc.
IOW, we must force Cameron and Fox News to come clean: did they ever have a real story at all or was this hoax b.s. the entire story?
{Embarrassingly easy!}
HOAX WARNING RE: HARDING INSTITUTE FOR FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY
The Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy proclaims that it is a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that states on its website that it believes "in American ingenuity, a special role for America in the world, the manifest destiny of the American dream, and the importance of American leadership in the cause of freedom and liberty." The group's website states that it is headed by "M. Thomas Eisenstadt", who serves as a "Senior Fellow".
The domain name for the website was registered in early November 2007 by an internet registration company based in Pennsylvania, according to Joker.com. The website claims in a blog posting that the group's website predated this: "Due to a hard-drive crash, we've had to rebuild the website from scratch. Apologies to everyone who has contributed over the years, but sadly it may take some time to reconstruct the archives."
As of June 2008, the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy is not listed with Guidestar.org as a U.S.-based 501(c)3 non-profit group.
In June 2008 blogger William K. Wolfum concluded that "M. Thomas Eisenstadt (who originally started a blog named www.michaeleisenstadt.com and was referred to as "Michael") was a hoax. As was his "think tank" called "The Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy" (which seems to be a joke, being that Warren G. Harding is widely considered to be one of the worst Presidents in U.S. history)."
They’ll never come clean. But if Carl disappears or is demoted, soon, I’ll take that as a confession.
Re your post #112.
Agree, but check out the interview (CNN?) with the Newsweek editors. Just at the end of the interview they reiterate some claim about Palin that they just had received from anonymous sources from inside the campaign.
I wouldn’t bet my house on it, but I think there is more than an even chance that they were listening to Mr Eisenstadt.
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