It's no conspiracy theory when the perpetrator, Lucas Baumbach, is bragging about how much he had to edit the videos to make them appear to be the same words.
br> Baumbach: ‘It was a piece of propaganda’
Lucas Baumbach, the Boise Republican legislative candidate who created the video mash-up juxtaposing phrases from speeches by Vaughn Ward and Barack Obama, calls himself a “RINO hunter” and a “Tea Party activist” and is blunt about why he created the mash-up: Because he supported Raul Labrador over Ward. His video mash-up gives the impression that Ward, in his announcement speech in the Idaho Capitol on Jan. 26, parroted Obama’s 2004 Democratic National Convention speech word-for-word, though that’s not exactly the case.Labrador is a sleazeball, and will most likely turn out to be a bigger disappointment than Bill Sali.
“No, it wasn’t accurate - it was a piece of propaganda,” Baumbach told Eye on Boise today, “and people thought that there was enough truth in it to change their votes.” Baumbach said he decided to exercise his video-editing skills after a May 13 blog post from the Idaho Statesman’s Dan Popkey pointed out similar turns of phrase in the two speeches, and Dustin Hurst of the Idaho Freedom Foundation’s IdahoReporter.com followed up with a May 21 story including video from both speeches. “That wasn’t attracting much attention,” Baumbach said. Simply posting both videos wasn’t enough, he said, “when you’re trying to get the word out, sensationalizing something.”
“I admit that there was a lot of editing that went on there,” Baumbach said. He’d just finished being congratulated by other like-minded Republicans after a GOP unity rally today at the state Capitol, where some were throwing around the word “brilliant;” last night, at GOP election-night headquarters, Baumbach attracted similar praise from some in the crowd who called him “the man of the hour.” Baumbach’s mash-up was featured on the “Tonight Show with Jay Leno” last night, though Leno left off the final scene in which Baumbach shows Ward’s face slowing morphing into Obama’s. Click below to read the full text of the speech sections that included the similar turns of phrase; click here to watch Baumbach’s mash-up.
OK, let’s see if we can clear this up. Vaughn Ward based a pretty good chunk of his speech announcing his candidacy on Obama’s speech during the 2004 Democrat convention. Did he just read Obama’s speech straight through? Of course not; he took out inappropriate stuff (such as references to Kerry), added some additional lines (that either he or his speechwriter wrote or, perhaps, he took from some other speech he liked) and made slught modifications to some of Obama’s words. But it was easily identifiable as Obama’s speech by those familiar with both speeches, as had been pointed out by others prior to Baumbach. All Baumbach did was edit the speeches to take out the parts that Ward didn’t copy from Obama and leave the parts that he did copy. That’s not a dirty trick or video doctoring or putting words in Ward’s mouth, it’s separating the wheat from the chaff. So Baumbach wants to pat himself on the back for his editing job? Well, he has the right to be proud—he did a great job, producing a very professional end product that made it clear to everyone exactly hom much of Ward’s speech was taken from Obama’s. Ward has no one to blame but himself for lifting so much of his speech from Obama’s.
And I don’t understand your comment about Labradior probably turning out to be as disappointing as Sali. Sali had one of the most conservative voting records in the nation during his brief stay in Congress, and the only disappointin. thing about him is that he lost to Minnick because RINOs and anti-Sali conservatives voted for Minnick.