December 30, 2011 12:35 AM UTC

Terror Grips The Pueblo Chieftain--Republicans Might Lose?!

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• by: Colorado Pols

We turn again to our friends at the Pueblo Chieftain’s editorial board, a subject we’ve spent some enjoyable time with in the recent past. From some of the more egregious distortions we’ve seen this side of the North Korean News Agency to an hysterically fact-free lovefest for Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler and his “quest” to uncover chimerical “vote fraud,” the Chieftain’s editorial page has had an increasingly troubled relationship with, well, the facts.

It does amount to a clearly identifiable partisan slant, but it’s been more interesting for the objectively wrong information these editorials contain than the overt partisanship. But for good measure, we’d be doing our readers a disservice if we didn’t note the Chieftain’s editorial from last Friday–factually wrong and partisan enough to be a GOP internal memo! And on the subject of the GOP’s defeat on the payroll tax cut extension, worries of very partisan consequences:

This has been a game of political chicken, with conservative House Republicans wanting a full-year extension of the tax holiday, while Democrats have insisted on the short-term fix. We suspect the liberals hope to exact more concessions from Republicans during debate after the first of the new year…although the payroll tax holiday has not produced the jobs that were touted by President Barack Obama and congressional liberals, there are other issues at stake here.

…So, while congressional Democrats seem to have won this skirmish, it’s important for Republicans to cut their losses and approve the Senate bill. Then, when Congress reconvenes next month, they should propose serious policies that would benefit the nation and show voters the Grand Old Party is worthy of support. [Pols emphasis]

Otherwise, the electorate may decide that the GOP brand is tarnished and return the Democrats to power once again.

First, the factual wrongness: negotiations over the full-year extension of the payroll tax cut broke down over how to pay for it. Democrats had proposed a “surtax” on the highest income earners to pay for the continued payroll tax cut. When Republicans could not agree to this, the two-month compromise was brokered between Senate Republicans and that chamber’s majority.

Which means the demanded “more concessions” we’re being warned to look out for from “the liberals” next year consist of the same thing we were arguing about this year: that is, how the full one-year extension of the payroll tax cut will be paid for. That’s how one tells the story accurately–to be distinguished from the Chieftain’s abridged-beyond-recognition version above.

But that’s the part you know. Much more hilarious is the Pueblo Chieftain apparently waking up from their Thursday afternoon nap and realizing that yes, editor-in-chief Bob Rawlings, this might really be bad for Republicans! Maybe they ought to “cut their losses” on hiking taxes on 160 million Americans, and come up with some “serious policies!” Otherwise “the brand” could be tarnished and, so unpretentiously assumed to be a bad thing, Republicans might lose!

If you think they get some unintentional accuracy points for their ending, we’ll allow it. But they seem to be entirely clueless about why the House GOP’s actions were hurting “the brand.”

And that is by far the most important part of the story.