AP "FactCheck" distorted Dems' claim that McCain voted with Bush "90 percent of the time"
SUMMARY: Purporting to give "[s]ome examples of who said what -- and what they left out," an AP "FactCheck" pointed to Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey's and Gov. Ed Rendell's statements that Sen. John McCain votes with President Bush "90 percent of the time" or more and stated that "McCain wasn't always a staunch Bush backer. In 2005, his support for Bush's position on legislation reached a low of 77 percent." But contrary to the AP's suggestion, neither Casey nor Rendell asserted that McCain was "always a staunch Bush backer."
Referring to claims by Pennsylvania Sen. Robert Casey Jr. and Gov. Ed Rendell during their August 26 speeches at the Democratic National Convention that Sen. John McCain votes with President Bush "90 percent of the time" or more than 90 percent of the time, an Associated Press "FactCheck," purporting to give "[s]ome examples of who said what -- and what they left out," stated that "McCain wasn't always a staunch Bush backer. In 2005, his support for Bush's position on legislation reached a low of 77 percent; last year, when he launched his latest bid for the GOP presidential nomination, he voted with Bush 95 percent of the time." In fact, as the AP itself acknowledged in its statement of "Fact[]," McCain indeed did "vote[] with President Bush 90 percent of the time from January 20, 2001, to when Congress left Washington on its annual August recess, according to a study by Congressional Quarterly." And contrary to the AP's suggestion, in referencing McCain's voting record in 2005, neither Casey nor Rendell asserted that McCain was "always a staunch Bush backer" -- though McCain did vote with Bush 89 percent of the time or more in each of the other years of the Bush presidency, reaching 95 percent consistency with Bush in 2007.
In her August 27 AP "FactCheck" article, headlined "FactCheck: Claims omit details on McCain's record," Darlene Superville wrote:
The shotgun-style charges Democratic National Convention speakers fired at Republican Sen. John McCain Tuesday night weren't necessarily half-truths. But in some instances, they weren't the whole story either.
Some examples of who said what -- and what they left out:
[...]
SEN. ROBERT CASEY JR. of PENNSYLVANIA: "John McCain calls himself a maverick, but he votes with George Bush 90 percent of the time. That's not a maverick. That's a sidekick."
RENDELL: "And guess who voted with President Bush 90 percent of the time? Sen. John McCain."
THE FACTS: McCain voted with President Bush 90 percent of the time from January 20, 2001, to when Congress left Washington on its annual August recess, according to a study by Congressional Quarterly. But McCain wasn't always a staunch Bush backer. In 2005, his support for Bush's position on legislation reached a low of 77 percent; last year, when he launched his latest bid for the GOP presidential nomination, he voted with Bush 95 percent of the time.
According to Congressional Quarterly, McCain's presidential support scores (the percentage of roll call votes on which he sided with Bush's position) for each completed individual year of Bush's presidency are:
|
Year |
McCain Presidential Support Score |
|
91 |
|
|
2002 |
90 |
|
2003 |
91 |
|
2004 |
92 |
|
2005 |
77 |
|
89 |
|
|
95 |
What's hilarious about this is that even a LOW of 77% clearly constitutes "staunch" backing on the part of McCain! For every year!
Who does AP think they're kidding?
NONE of their stats even begins to refute a point that wasn't even made by the Dems last night, or ever...
DNP talking point going down the drain
ROFL
Are you an idiot?
91% 90% 91% 92% 77% 89% 95%...
That averages 89% of the time.
OH. MY. GOD.
We said it was 90%. (*gasp* The horror!)
Considering how many votes the guy missed, excuse me all to hell if I don't break my back bending over to apologize over our GROSS exageration of ONE f'ing percent!
I guess its true.....
If your a Republican that votes with another (thats mostly hated) Republican.... you are not in cahoot with that person unless its at least 91% or more.....
But if your a Democrat that votes with another (that was mostly loved) Democrat.... you are in cahoots with that Democrat if you even consider voting the same as him/her? Or your a flaming liberal? Or your a Communist?
Gotta love the projection of the rightwing!
The Republican's MUST have 'wuss on da payroll. There's no other explanation for the inanity (is that a word? Rhymes with HANNITY!) of his posts. (I'm giving him credit now - becasue there is one explanation: STUPIDITY. But I'm going against my usual credo and ATTRIBUTING to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Normally I don't do that.)
It must be a nice job though. I have to wait until my boss isn;t looking to post here! LOL :)
And the numbers prove you incorrect as well. Or as someone else said, are you quibbling over 1 percent? I guess that you are. If I were those guys, I'd take it back, and say sorry, we were incorrect, it was actually 89%. We goofed.
Why do the right wingers on this board love the LOLs? And the ROFLs?
Mags,
Is it true only right-wingers LOL?
"McCain voted with President Bush 90 percent of the time from January 20, 2001, to when Congress left Washington on its annual August recess, according to a study by Congressional Quarterly. But McCain wasn't always a staunch Bush backer. In 2005, his support for Bush's position on legislation reached a low of 77 percent; last year, when he launched his latest bid for the GOP presidential nomination, he voted with Bush 95 percent of the time."
Is it just me, or does the phrase "wasn't always a staunch Bush backer" usually refer to a time before the period in question? It seems like wording more appropriate for talking about 1997 or something, not 2005. "Wasn't a continuous..." or "wasn't a consistent Bush backer" seems more appropriate somehow.
The 90% stat was accurate either way, so I'm not sure what the AP thinks their point is. Pointing out that his most recent year is 95% only makes Casey and Rendell look to be understating the case. If Casey and Rendell had claimed that "McCain votes with Bush 95% of the time", then I would understand a fact check that pointed out the actual numbers, even if almost everyone would consider the difference to be minor.
But McCain wasn't always a staunch Bush backer. In 2005, his support for Bush's position on legislation reached a low of 77 percent
77 percent is STILL "staunch backing." And that was the LOW!
Only in an incredibly biased Republican media, run by economic royalists, would 77 percent be considered a low. It's positively Orwellian and totally dishonest.
Senator Joe Lieberman consistently scores higher than 77% from liberal groups, yet noone around here thinks he's a liberal.
The percentage isn't as important as the issues voted upon.
Let's look at this another way.
The classic ploy of Media Matters is to take a FACT about a liberal that a conservative points out and say ..."well, they never mentioned so-and-so."
This is EXACTLY what FactCheck is pointing out with Rendell and Casey.
HYPOCRITES
What is the relevance of the 77% statistic? Does it make the overall 90% invalid, meaningless, misleading?
If MMfA notes something that has no relevance to the statement they're highlighting, point it out.
The classic ploy of Media Matters is to take a FACT about a liberal that a conservative points out and say ..."well, they never mentioned so-and-so."
AP is attempting to rebut an assertion that-- sorry- wasn't even made by Dems. That's the point. They are trying to find a blameworthy culpability that never happened.
And worse, they didn't even rebut it!
Every single stat they cited for each year clearly establishes that McCain is a staunch supporter of Bush.
Totally braindead.
77% agreement with Bush still means that you were wrong 77% of the time.
If McCain's proud of that record, I don't hear him bragging about it.
I see nothing wrong here. All the facts are laid out just fine. The reader can judge for themselves whether or not the AP got it right or wrong. I certainly don't need MMFA stuffing this unnecessary and whiny tidbit down my throat demanding that I fall in line with their poopy partisan parsing. I'm sorry if some on the left are sensitive dummyheads and need these marching orders. Meh!
The reader can judge for themselves whether or not the AP got it right or wrong.
Are you joking or just a RW troll? The reader pretty much always assumes the AP gets it right. Here they got it wrong. (There nothing invaldi about rounding 89% to 90% - I defy you to find one person who's not a profession statistician who would have a problem with that!) They got it WRONG, and there's nothing to JUDGE. It's WRONG. THAT'S WHY IT'S HERE.
Gov, I'm familiar with your other posts, so I recognized right away that you were trying to parody the piece. But parody is no longer a good idea unless you end it with </parody>. The right has murdered parody, and it's no longer possible to use it without telling everyone explicitly that it's parody. There's no longer anything you can say that's so outrageous that it couldn't be a perfectly serious right-wing rant.
The first time I ever went to the Onion and didn't know what it was, I was three paragraphs into the article before I realized that it was parody. Until then, I just thought it was an average conservative spouting typical conservative ignorance. Parody used to be one of my favorite forms of humor, but now it's as dead as journalism.
You're doing just fine.
No need to add sarcasm tags or emoticons or any of that nonsense.
You've been here long enough for most people to know exactly what your post meant. Don't ruin the fun for the rest of us.
I did the same thing the other day and someone thought I was a right wing troll.
Before anyone comments about someone who's so far to the right to be true, check to see if they've posted anything else in the last couple of days.
Chances are, the poster was using humor, sarcasm, irony, or something other than pure unadulterated right wing bull.
*whoops*
I really have to recalibrate my b*llsh!t detector. A lot of sarcasm is getting rated as serious b*llsh!t lately! ;)
I certainly don't need MMFA stuffing this unnecessary and whiny tidbit down my throat demanding that I fall in line with their poopy partisan parsing. I'm sorry if some on the left are sensitive dummyheads and need these marching orders. Meh!
So Gov, er, then why are YOU responding to it? Or even reading it?
I retract my defense of your humorous post.
I can handle humor, sarcasm and irony but cannot sit by and see these threads used for mockery!
I was trying to mock the WITH people.
Sorry-- it sounds so real these days.....one never knows.....
While I agree that this is basically a silly mention by "FactCheck", as both Casey and Rendell got it right......the main beef by MMFA appears to be FactCheck's "always a staunch Bush backer" statement. While neither Casey nor Rendell used that exact phrase, to parse that difference is also silly.
First MMFA criticizes it, then they say this, "though McCain did vote with Bush 89 percent of the time or more in each of the other years of the Bush presidency, reaching 95 percent consistency with Bush in 2007", which would seem to punctuate FactCheck's statement that McCain is a staunch Bush backer.
89% legislative support over eight miserable years would pretty much suggest he was a "staunch backer" even though the two speaker did not say as much.
"FactCheck did not distort, they just nitpicked."
No, it was indeed a distortion. The 90% assertion made by Casey and Rendell was irrefutablly correct. They left nothing out. For the AP to cherry pick a percentage from 3 years ago is not nitpicking, it's distorting. You must disagree so go ahead and knock your socks off….
You're right, I agree with you. FactCheck did not distort, they just nitpicked.- tommy /
No, they distorted.
First they tried to rebut a claim that Dems never even made, creating a phony blameworthy situation, accusing the Dems of distortion.
Then, their rebuttal not only didn't rebut the allegation, but proved the point that they said the Dems had made, but didn't-- but NOW CAN!
Totally fubar on the part of AP, but very, very revealing. It's called bias. It's phony harassment, like most of what we have been seeing this week.
77%
My God, they couldn't be more separate!
Wow, 77 percent! What an independent, what a maverick, what a hero!
Nobody tells John McCain how to vote! (because, with stats like this, they don't have to!)
77% versis 90%, which one shows off his maverickness better?
The word is maverickosity.
Please, have some respect for the language!
Sure its not maverkiness, maverickgist, or say maverickivue all over again?
Like my mom, I really respect the english language because both can take a punch. {:-P
I support the AP on this. It's fine for them to give more details of how often McCain voted with Bush.
How about, like, almost all of the time...?
So the dems, of course are wrong to claim this of McCain, so thanks AP, for telling us this, and then giving us the figures to... back... it... up....???
FOURNIER CAN'T HELP HIMSELF.... Over the weekend, Ron Fournier, the AP's Washington bureau chief and the man responsible for directing the wire service's coverage of the presidential campaign, received a fair amount of criticism for the latest in a series of pieces that toed the McCain campaign line.
I was curious to see if Fournier would consider the negative response, reevaluate his rather obvious biases, and take pains to improve his reporting going forward. Apparently not. Here's his piece analyzing Hillary Clinton's speech to the Democratic convention:
From there, Fournier recites the very quotes from the Democratic primaries that the McCain campaign has been pushing desperately all week. So, to hear the AP's Washington bureau chief tell it, the most important takeaway from Clinton's stirring speech at the convention is the criticism she directed at Obama as far back as nine months ago. And this, coincidentally, just happens to be what Republicans want to see emphasized this week more than anything else.
Swopa added, "[W]hat Clinton and Obama actually believe isn't important to Fournier, any more than he gave a flying fig about Clinton's actual speech last night. His intention is to distract readers from what she said, to disrupt what Clinton and Obama are seeking to achieve by imposing his previously-formed opinions on the event."
Fournier isn't exactly a neutral observer. I get it. But given Fournier's recent history -- he actually considered joining the McCain campaign's payroll last year -- one would like to think he'd take steps to bolster his journalistic credibility and objectivity. As the criticism has grown louder, even from mainstream news outlets, it stands to reason that Fournier would go out of his way to clean up his act.
He is, regrettably, doing the exact opposite
The real question is: What issues that McCain did not support Bush comprised the other 10%?- anotheramerican
The ones McCain was conscious for? Maybe he could use those as a campaign slogan;
McCain: Batting .100 for America!
Check this out ! http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/27/0757/02638/539/576110: That's no maverick , That's a sidekick!
FYI for everyone:
The right wing conservative Associated Press' editor, Right Wng Republican Liar Ron Fournier, once considered joining Liar McCain's presidential campaign, but declined.
Fournier considered it easier to make the AP a right wing conservative Republican version of Pravda.
My friends, give McCain(R) a break. Jezzzus, he was a POW for 5 1/2 friggin' years. How dare anybody question this war hero! He's a straigh-talker (with a bad dental plate), a maverick, and in case you forgot, a POW.
/snark