Coulter gets one right - but not in the way she thinks.
May 28, 2010 12:03 am ET by Christine Schwen
Tonight on Hannity, Ann Coulter the White House's alleged offering of a job to Joe Sestak in order to drop out of the Pennsylvania primary -- which she described as a "crime" -- to the allegation that the administration offered Congressman Jim Matheson's brother a judgeship in order to buy Matheson's vote on health care, saying it described a "pattern of Chicago behavior."
Well Coulter is right that there's a pattern here -- a pattern of the conservative media relentlessly advancing discredited claims in a blatant attempt to smear the president. In that respect, those examples are quite similar.
The Matheson claim was absurd from the start. Matheson voted against both the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which is health care reform legislation passed by the Senate, and the Reconciliation package, which made changes to the Senate bill. Matheson also voted "No" for the original House health care bill. Matheson's spokeswoman reportedly "called the question 'patently ridiculous,' " and the White House said it was "absurd." Moreover, Republican Sen. Robert Bennett (UT), and former Judge Michael McConnell -- an appointee of former President Bush -- who last occupied the seat to which Scott Matheson has been named, definitively debunked the smear.
Similarly, legal experts have rejected the claim that Sestak's alleged job offer was any kind of crime. Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor and executive director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington commented of the allegations: "I don't see the crime;" indeed, even the Bush administration chief ethics lawyer Richard Painter wrote: "The allegation that the job offer was somehow a 'bribe' in return for Sestak not running in the primary is difficult to support." Furthermore, the administrations of Presidents Reagan and Bush both reportedly attempted to get candidates to drop out of Republican primaries, with Reagan's administration reportedly offering one of those candidates a job to do so.
But that doesn't stop the conservative media from engaging in the thuggish politics -- which Coulter calls "Chicago behavior" -- of trying to smear the President with dubious claims.
They're usually offered as a substitute for facts, and include several "agendas", and words like "freedom" and " government control".
"Chicago style" is one of these that just makes me think of pizza, and lets me know that the conversation isn't going anywhere.
And again, the discussion was entirely about food! It's a Pavlovian response for that kind of person!