Republican National Committee Now Pushing Associated Press' Hit Piece On Obama
March 27, 2007 -- 2:27 PM EST // //
Okay, this is getting good. The Republican National Committee is now aggressively flacking to reporters the Associated Press article on Barack Obama I ranted about below. The RNC's reproduction of it just landed in my in-box.
The striking thing here is that the excerpts the RNC sent out are very similar to the entire piece itself. It's not unusual, of course, for the Republican or Democratic committees to send around different parts of articles, even ones that contain other stuff that doesn't advance the message they are trying to push. But in this case, it's not like the RNC lifted a few choice passages; rather, the RNC quoted in bulk, without removing all that much of it.
Also keep in mind that this wasn't a news piece with a central factual revelation about Obama, something that would more understandably be sent around virtually in toto if that revelation were damaging. This is an analysis piece -- and the central take is precisely the one the RNC wants reporters to see.
Take a look. Here's what the RNC has excerpted from the piece and is emailing around:
Is Obama all style and little substance?The voices are growing louder asking the question: Is Barack Obama all style and little substance?
The freshman Illinois senator began his campaign facing the perception that he lacks the experience to be president, especially compared to rivals with decades of work on foreign and domestic policy. So far, he's done little to challenge it. He's delivered no policy speeches and provided few details about how he would lead the country. ...
[Other candidates] don't have such a barrier to prove they are qualified to be president.
The differences were on display Saturday in Las Vegas, where the Democratic candidates answered questions about health care. ...
Daniel Romo, 45, a clerk at Kaiser Permanente in Los Angeles and a member of the Service Employees International Union that sponsored the forum, left with Clinton and Edwards as his top choices. Obama did not impress him.
"I believe that he needed to know a little more about health care issues and he was just unprepared," Romo said.
David Peter, a child support case worker and member of the SEIU in Las Vegas who was also in the audience, said Obama may have been better off not participating in the forum. ...
"He wasn't prepared for it," Peter said. ...
[Obama] has downplayed the importance of the specifics at this stage, saying that it's not a lack of details that are the problem. ...
Now compare that to the original. Not all that different at all. Do you all agree that that's striking?
Just to reiterate, there's no question that we should want to see some more policy detail out of this guy, and his experience, or lack of it, is a completely valid topic. My objection to the AP piece is the gratuitousness of its central question, as well as the clear factual omissions that were necessary to shore up its central thesis. There's little question that it's precisely this gratuitousness that makes the piece so in sync with the message the RNC wants to deliver.
As I said, the fact that the RNC is sending parts of a piece around doesn't automatically guarantee that the article is unfair. But in this case, the RNC could ship large chunks of it out, including an entirely intact headline and lede, secure in the knowledge that its central analytic message was precisely the one that the RNC wanted to advance. Revealing, that.
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