Move Back! - Along with

Move Back! - Along with most of the conservative blogosphere, I've been hammering on MoveOn.org for years now. MoveOn - famously characterized by pundits from the Fraters all the way down to that Coulter chick as a group founded on the principle of making it safe to be a middle-aged white lothario - has busied itself with becoming a clearinghouse for anti-Bush claims. Not exactly conspiracy theories; it's more like "Question: How do you know MoveOn is claiming Bush lied about something? Answer: Their fingers are moving over their keyboards".

Spinsanity - not a conservative site, mind you - notes this, writing about "The Daily Misleader", which is MoveOn's blog:

with The Daily Mislead, MoveOn has become the leader of a new school of liberal criticism that seeks to brand every policy disagreement with President Bush as a broken promise or lie. These loose accusations trivialize charges of dishonesty, reducing them to little more than another partisan spin tactic.

Vague promises, partisan interpretations

The most frequent way in which The Daily Mislead unfairly accuses the Bush administration of dishonesty is to present evidence of a vague promise made by the president and attack him for betraying this promise by not supporting some favored liberal policy.

For instance, on November 20, the Mislead made this accusation: "President Bush unveiled his energy plan in May 2001, vowing to 'make this country the world's leader in energy efficiency and conservation in the 21st century.' But the energy bill under final consideration by the Senate and supported by the President devotes less than ten percent of the $25.7 billion in tax breaks to energy efficiency."

But why is ten percent not enough? How much would be enough? MoveOn never says, because it's too busy engaging in partisan attacks posing as objective analysis of dishonesty.

The article goes on to note, correctly, that this sort of thing isn't doing the alternative left media any good in the long run.

Definitely worth a read.

In Other MoveOn News - I subscribe to the MoveOn.org mailing list. It's usually a repetitive daily call to action against the President's latest outrage against democracy, like the Medicare spending bill that out-Democratted the Democrats.

But I got this one yesterday:

The House is scheduled to vote on this bill today, Monday December 8th.
The Senate may follow suit soon afterward -- unless we help stop them.

Please call your Representative and Senators now, at:

Representative Betty McCollum
DC Phone: 202-225-6631

Senator Mark Dayton
DC Phone: 202-224-3244
Local Phone: 612-727-5220

Senator Dean Barkley
DC Phone: 202-224-9430
Local Phone: N/A

Urge them to reject Bush's Omnibus* spending bill.

Move On, indeed.

They sent a correction later in the day.

Posted by Mitch at December 9, 2003 06:11 AM