Richard Tafoya
Mar 4th, 2009, 10:47 PM
Washington Post Plumline:
http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/political-media/new-media-meme-obama-team-solely-to-blame-for-rush-story/
New media meme alert: A secret plot hatched solely by the White House is entirely to blame for the Rush Limbaugh story getting so much media attention and turning into a media circus.
This shiny new meme is popping up on the same day (today) that top Republicans launched a new offensive, accusing the White House of deliberately focusing attention on Limbaugh to divert attention from solving the country’s problems.
But come on: None of this is really true. Or at least, it’s a grotesque exaggeration.
First of all, the Politico piece just doesn’t say this. If anything, the reporting in there proves the opposite. The piece says that the “strategy took shape” after Dem strategists James Carville and Stan Greenberg polled on Rush and found him to be deeply unpopular. But as Steve Benen notes (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_03/017144.php), Carville and Greenberg aren’t Obama advisers, let alone White House advisers.
...
The main data points in the piece on White House involvement? That Carville and Begala, and other outside groups, began discussing the strategy with White House advisers — after the two were already pounding the Rush theme on television. Also, that White House advisers started publicly pushing the Rush angle — after the story was going full throttle, after Rush had reiterated his desire for Obama to fail at CPAC, and after reporters asked the White House for reaction to Rush.
...
Anyone paying attention to this story knows it developed “organically,” as Paul Begala put it (http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/democratic-national-committee/top-dems-planning-amped-up-efforts-to-elevate-rush-as-gops-public-face/) to me last week. There’s just no “there” here.
http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/political-media/new-media-meme-obama-team-solely-to-blame-for-rush-story/
New media meme alert: A secret plot hatched solely by the White House is entirely to blame for the Rush Limbaugh story getting so much media attention and turning into a media circus.
This shiny new meme is popping up on the same day (today) that top Republicans launched a new offensive, accusing the White House of deliberately focusing attention on Limbaugh to divert attention from solving the country’s problems.
But come on: None of this is really true. Or at least, it’s a grotesque exaggeration.
First of all, the Politico piece just doesn’t say this. If anything, the reporting in there proves the opposite. The piece says that the “strategy took shape” after Dem strategists James Carville and Stan Greenberg polled on Rush and found him to be deeply unpopular. But as Steve Benen notes (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_03/017144.php), Carville and Greenberg aren’t Obama advisers, let alone White House advisers.
...
The main data points in the piece on White House involvement? That Carville and Begala, and other outside groups, began discussing the strategy with White House advisers — after the two were already pounding the Rush theme on television. Also, that White House advisers started publicly pushing the Rush angle — after the story was going full throttle, after Rush had reiterated his desire for Obama to fail at CPAC, and after reporters asked the White House for reaction to Rush.
...
Anyone paying attention to this story knows it developed “organically,” as Paul Begala put it (http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/democratic-national-committee/top-dems-planning-amped-up-efforts-to-elevate-rush-as-gops-public-face/) to me last week. There’s just no “there” here.