Dan Calabrese: AP = All Propaganda

*
Dan Calabrese notes that incumbent U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis of South Carolina's 4th congressional district was destroyed (by a whopping 42 percentage points) in the GOP primary this year by local prosecutor Trey Gowdy. Incredibly, the Associated Press blames Sarah Palin, even though she never endorsed any candidate in that race:

Now, many people can tell you why Inglis lost, although none of them work for the AP. Inglis lost because America finds itself in a precarious fiscal situation and needs to elect people with certain qualities in order to fix that situation – and Inglis does not possess these qualities. America is careening toward fiscal insolvency because of Congress’s refusal to get federal spending under control. Solving the problem means electing people who will reform entitlements, reject pork-barrel politics and stop trying to kick the can down the road so the next generation of Americans can deal with the problem.

[...]

So in an attempt to explain all this, the AP highlights what it sees as Inglis’s brave, high-minded denunciations of Glenn Beck, whom he labels a divisive fearmonger. But that is just an entry point for the AP to take a shot at one of its favorite targets – Sarah Palin.

Now, let’s back up for a second. You will recall that Palin denounced the ObamaCare socialized medicine bill for the fact that it will likely lead to “death panels,” a description that refers to committees of “experts” who will make decisions about who gets life-saving treatment and who doesn’t – largely based on what it will cost the government.

You will also recall that the major media, particularly the AP, screamed long and loud to anyone who would listen that there are no death panels in the bill. The media made this insistence so many times that the left-wing propaganda group MediaMatters declared Palin’s statement “debunked” based on the fact that the media said so many, many times, which qualifies as evidence of truth in the twisted world of MediaMatters.

What you may not recall is, as documented in this column and elsewhere, the bill (now a law) absolutely does contain the panel to which Palin refers. It is called the Independent Payment Advisory Board, and it is so important to the supporters of ObamaCare that Harry Reid added a stipulation that it cannot be eliminated without a two-thirds majority vote of both houses of Congress.

But the AP has, for nearly a year, treated Palin’s death panel comment as an established falsehood. So the AP now sees Inglis as the tragic victim of his own courageous honesty because he, too, bought the AP’s propaganda.

[...]

Poor Bob. He lost the seat to which he had a divine right because he wouldn’t join in the horrible demagoguery practiced by Sarah Palin, and now that his career as a congressman-for-life has been cut tragically short, the AP must run to him for an explanation of all that has gone wrong in American politics.

Because people who lose primaries for their own seats by 42 points are usually the smartest people in the room, don’t you know?

Dan Calabrese has much more to say on this at North Star National.

h/t: roy y

- JP