Is MoveOn Responsible for Rathergate?
I doubt it....
CrushKerry has a story today that says sources in the Kerry campaign are claiming that MoveOn is responsible....
I commented there, and I will re-post my comment here for your perusal:
I'm not buying...you're being sold a bill of goods by your "sources"...My reasoning:
1) The Spectator reported several days ago:
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=7096
"More than six weeks ago, an opposition research staffer for the Democratic National Committee received documents purportedly written by President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard squadron commander, the late Col. Jerry Killian.
The oppo researcher claimed the source was 'a retired military officer.' According to a DNC staffer, the documents were seen by both senior staff members at the DNC, as well as the Kerry campaign."
CBS says "documents that were provided by unimpeachable sources." They're obviously partisans, but do you think that if somebody from MoveOn handed them docs they would call that person an "unimpeachable" source?
To me the Spectator article is more believable. They might be suspicious of a MoveOn operative who is most likely an amateur player without a background on the national stage, but they would be inclined to trust a DNC or Kerry operative with a national reputation to protect. After all, a MoveOn operative might burn them, but a DNC or Kerry operative would have much more to lose...
2) To quote the usual Democratic line: "I question the timing"...
The DNC announces a major initiative to question Bush's guard service. Democratic mouthpiece Susan Estrich publishes a column talking about using every dirty trick in the book to beat Bush. And just by chance CBS comes out with this interview and these documents at the *exact same time*?
Sorry...no way...no how...this was a coordinated attack, and CBS/Dan Rather are hip-deep in it....
3) Ben Barnes is a major Kerry fundraiser - to the tune of half-million dollars or more. He's "a player" at the national level with Tom Daschle having previously called him "the 51st senator." Do you think he appeared for this interview without prior approval from the Kerry campaign? This guy's strings are being pulled from the Kerry campaign and they gave this interview the green light.
4) Tom Harkin, designated attack dog for the Kerry campaign, holds a press conference the very next morning attacking President Bush as a liar....That's a little *too* quickly to be coincidence....
Besides, last I heard Harkin didn't do MoveOn's bidding, but when the DNC/Kerry campaign ask him to jump he asks how high...
5) Would Dan Rather go to the mat to protect MoveOn? Not a chance...Would he risk his entire career and reputation for MoveOn? Not a prayer...What would he stand to gain from such a sacrifice?
On the other hand, would he bite the bullet for the Democratic Party of which his daughter is a big player in Texas? Sounds like Dad's taking one for the team to me....
6) With the documents being proven forgeries, it would provide Kerry with the perfect kind of "Sista Souljah" moment denouncing this attempt to smear President Bush. It would cost him nothing because the story has been disproven already. It would have the additional benefit of making him look like a "big man" who is above the smears.
He has a crowd of Clinton advisors surrounding him now. Even if Cahill and Shrum weren't astute enough to pick up on this, the Clintonistas would have been sharp enough to pull this page out of Clinton's playbook...
As it is, there is widespread speculation his campaign may be implicated. If he could plausibly deny it, why wouldn't he have done so, by today at least, personally? Answer: he can't...
7) The CBS defense and the Democratic talking points on this topic can be overlaid like the forgeries and a Word replica.
CBS keeps pointing out that the questions about the documents aren't the important part - it's the questions about Bush's service they raise.
Democrats aren't running away from the forgeries either - which they would be if they weren't responsible. Their talking points are that Bush needs to answer the questions that the memos raise.
Hmm....
8) The DNC released a new ad today:
http://www.democrats.org/fortunateson/index.html
That ad features, as its centerpiece, the Dan Rather interview with Ben Barnes. If the DNC didn't have anything to do with it, then why on earth would they use the interview? Dan Rather is up to his neck in credibility controversy. Ben Barnes has been exposed as a "liar" and an "opportunist" by his own daughter.
If they were really furious that this story was spinning out of control because of amateurs at MoveOn, the last thing in the world they would do is tie themselves into it by using this interview.
On the other hand, let's assume that my scenario is the accurate one: that the documents came from the DNC/Kerry campaign. Then everything that has transpired to date makes perfect sense:
- Dan Rather can't back off this story no matter what because it's not about protecting a 527 whose funding sources will probably dry up after John McCain gets back into town and proposes significantly curtailing 527 financing. No sir, it's about protecting his political party and his presidential candidate...There's no other explanation that makes any sense....
- The DNC can't back away from the interview because if they did then that leaves Dan Rather's butt hanging out there, and Dan Rather is far too savvy to let himself hang alone. So the Democrats deploy their surrogates to try to spin the topic off the forgery onto Bush's service, and the DNC uses Dan Rather's interview in their ad to reassure Dan that they're not going to back away from him.
- The original "unspun" stories from within CBS talk about the source of the documents being the DNC/Kerry campaign. Nothing new came out until it became clear that the blogosphere was going to get mainstream coverage for their investigative work.
Now that the rest of the major media are feeding on this story like sharks at dinner time, they have to cover their collective rears. So now the story becomes that those "amateurs at MoveOn" are responsible.
When in doubt, Occam's Razor is best: Of all the possible explanations, the simplest one is the most likely one to be true.
The DNC/Kerry campaign is responsible....
Tell me what you think...
CrushKerry has a story today that says sources in the Kerry campaign are claiming that MoveOn is responsible....
I commented there, and I will re-post my comment here for your perusal:
I'm not buying...you're being sold a bill of goods by your "sources"...My reasoning:
1) The Spectator reported several days ago:
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=7096
"More than six weeks ago, an opposition research staffer for the Democratic National Committee received documents purportedly written by President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard squadron commander, the late Col. Jerry Killian.
The oppo researcher claimed the source was 'a retired military officer.' According to a DNC staffer, the documents were seen by both senior staff members at the DNC, as well as the Kerry campaign."
CBS says "documents that were provided by unimpeachable sources." They're obviously partisans, but do you think that if somebody from MoveOn handed them docs they would call that person an "unimpeachable" source?
To me the Spectator article is more believable. They might be suspicious of a MoveOn operative who is most likely an amateur player without a background on the national stage, but they would be inclined to trust a DNC or Kerry operative with a national reputation to protect. After all, a MoveOn operative might burn them, but a DNC or Kerry operative would have much more to lose...
2) To quote the usual Democratic line: "I question the timing"...
The DNC announces a major initiative to question Bush's guard service. Democratic mouthpiece Susan Estrich publishes a column talking about using every dirty trick in the book to beat Bush. And just by chance CBS comes out with this interview and these documents at the *exact same time*?
Sorry...no way...no how...this was a coordinated attack, and CBS/Dan Rather are hip-deep in it....
3) Ben Barnes is a major Kerry fundraiser - to the tune of half-million dollars or more. He's "a player" at the national level with Tom Daschle having previously called him "the 51st senator." Do you think he appeared for this interview without prior approval from the Kerry campaign? This guy's strings are being pulled from the Kerry campaign and they gave this interview the green light.
4) Tom Harkin, designated attack dog for the Kerry campaign, holds a press conference the very next morning attacking President Bush as a liar....That's a little *too* quickly to be coincidence....
Besides, last I heard Harkin didn't do MoveOn's bidding, but when the DNC/Kerry campaign ask him to jump he asks how high...
5) Would Dan Rather go to the mat to protect MoveOn? Not a chance...Would he risk his entire career and reputation for MoveOn? Not a prayer...What would he stand to gain from such a sacrifice?
On the other hand, would he bite the bullet for the Democratic Party of which his daughter is a big player in Texas? Sounds like Dad's taking one for the team to me....
6) With the documents being proven forgeries, it would provide Kerry with the perfect kind of "Sista Souljah" moment denouncing this attempt to smear President Bush. It would cost him nothing because the story has been disproven already. It would have the additional benefit of making him look like a "big man" who is above the smears.
He has a crowd of Clinton advisors surrounding him now. Even if Cahill and Shrum weren't astute enough to pick up on this, the Clintonistas would have been sharp enough to pull this page out of Clinton's playbook...
As it is, there is widespread speculation his campaign may be implicated. If he could plausibly deny it, why wouldn't he have done so, by today at least, personally? Answer: he can't...
7) The CBS defense and the Democratic talking points on this topic can be overlaid like the forgeries and a Word replica.
CBS keeps pointing out that the questions about the documents aren't the important part - it's the questions about Bush's service they raise.
Democrats aren't running away from the forgeries either - which they would be if they weren't responsible. Their talking points are that Bush needs to answer the questions that the memos raise.
Hmm....
8) The DNC released a new ad today:
http://www.democrats.org/fortunateson/index.html
That ad features, as its centerpiece, the Dan Rather interview with Ben Barnes. If the DNC didn't have anything to do with it, then why on earth would they use the interview? Dan Rather is up to his neck in credibility controversy. Ben Barnes has been exposed as a "liar" and an "opportunist" by his own daughter.
If they were really furious that this story was spinning out of control because of amateurs at MoveOn, the last thing in the world they would do is tie themselves into it by using this interview.
On the other hand, let's assume that my scenario is the accurate one: that the documents came from the DNC/Kerry campaign. Then everything that has transpired to date makes perfect sense:
- Dan Rather can't back off this story no matter what because it's not about protecting a 527 whose funding sources will probably dry up after John McCain gets back into town and proposes significantly curtailing 527 financing. No sir, it's about protecting his political party and his presidential candidate...There's no other explanation that makes any sense....
- The DNC can't back away from the interview because if they did then that leaves Dan Rather's butt hanging out there, and Dan Rather is far too savvy to let himself hang alone. So the Democrats deploy their surrogates to try to spin the topic off the forgery onto Bush's service, and the DNC uses Dan Rather's interview in their ad to reassure Dan that they're not going to back away from him.
- The original "unspun" stories from within CBS talk about the source of the documents being the DNC/Kerry campaign. Nothing new came out until it became clear that the blogosphere was going to get mainstream coverage for their investigative work.
Now that the rest of the major media are feeding on this story like sharks at dinner time, they have to cover their collective rears. So now the story becomes that those "amateurs at MoveOn" are responsible.
When in doubt, Occam's Razor is best: Of all the possible explanations, the simplest one is the most likely one to be true.
The DNC/Kerry campaign is responsible....
Tell me what you think...
posted by Jim | 6:13 PM
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