Gov. Palin: 'Public lies were told about Mr. Ross'

From today's edition of the Juneau Empire:

Gov. Sarah Palin is blaming bloggers and lies for the defeat of her attorney general nominee, who the Alaska Legislature refused to confirm last week.

At her first news conference after the Legislature voted 35-23 to reject Wayne Anthony Ross as attorney general, Palin said the defeat was due to "deliberate misrepresentation" of Ross' statements.

"A great problem was public lies were told about Mr. Ross," she said.

Palin declined to say whose lies undermined Ross, citing the blogosphere and e-mails from members of the public.

Although the governor mentioned stories of Ross taking part in a machine gun shoot on private property as "just one example," Hollis French, who led the opposition to Ross in the State Senate, said that the alleged shooting incident "certainly never came up in floor debate."

Oh, come on, Senator. It doesn't take a mentalist to know which unfounded rumor was used to shoot down Ross' nomination. It was Leah Burton's unsubstantiated smear that WAR has said, "If a guy can’t rape his wife… who’s he gonna rape?" 

But it was repeated, and many times over. Burton's prevarication made the rounds of Palin-thrashing Alaska blogs and quickly went viral on the nutroots. E-mail rounds of faux outrage not-so-coincidentally were fired off. Although Ross emphatically denied ever saying such a reprehensible thing, that was all the tag team of French and Burton needed.

WAR's nomination had looked certain after his first day before the committee, but the damage was done. He was a dead man walking. How easily a good man's (or woman's) reputation can be destroyed by a single accusation, even if no one comes forward to say that they also heard it.

Burton's accusation is such a vile thing that I'm not surprised Gov. Palin would be loathe to repeat it. But for this Empire story to to omit it is ludicrous.

- JP