October 24, 2009 08:18 PM UTC

In Grand Junction, Old News is New News if the NRCC Says So

• 10 Comments
• by: ThillyWabbit

The Grand Junction Sentinel‘s resident right-wing “reporter” Gary Harmon dutifully reports Rep. John Salazar’s denunciation of Howard Dean’s months-old website listing Salazar as a supporter of the public option:

A Web site operated by former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean claims U.S. Rep.John Salazar, D-Colo., as a supporter of the public option for health care.

Republicans pounced on the characterization, and a Salazar spokesman sharply renounced it.

“Republicans Pounced?” Not so much.

The appearance of Salazar’s name on Dean’s list was enough to spark the National Republican Central Committee[sic] to fire off a news release declaring that Salazar “has finally fallen into line behind his radical party leaders with support for their government healthcare takeover.”

Google tells me the Stand with Dr. Dean website has been listing John Salazar since at least July 10 as a public option supporter.

If the National Republican Congressional Committee “fir[ed] off a press release,” did it do so in July (or before) when it was actually news? Or did the NRCC just omit the part about failing to notice the listing for at least three months?

And did the NRCC press release state that Rep Salazar “signed” anything as the response from Salazar spokesman Eric Wortman seems to indicate? I can’t tell, because the NRCC hasn’t posted the release on the press release section of its website. If the NRCC did make that allegation, it shows the extent to which Gary Harmon is willing to check the facts before doing a story about a partisan press release about a three month old non-story.

In addition to your emails, Democracy for America members and our partners have made calls to Congress and reported back the results to Stand With Dr. Dean. We have compiled the reports from those calls and combed through public statements of every member of Congress. Based on a complete review of your reports and our research, the grid below lists every member of Congress and their basic position on the inclusion of a public healthcare option

This statement is at the top of every single congressional listing page. There is no indication that they ever had a single member of Congress sign anything. It’s a crowd-sourcing exercise–zillions of people call, fax, and write, and the responses are aggregated, weighted, and posted.

Which raises a question for Rep. Salazar: Why not just be forthcoming? At this point we’re not months out with no idea of what a public option might look like. Why not be like your Senators, your Governor, and your six House colleagues and state your position absolutely so that we don’t have to take the mathematical averages of your various official and public statements, combined with the sources and amounts of political contributions to divine your position?

And why defend yourself to the National Republican Corruption Caucus? You know that the odds are better than 50/50 that whatever they are saying is fraudulent.