Jenningsgate?

Powerline has an extensive summary of the current "Talking Points Memo" controversy; a memo re the Schiavo controversy was circulated among the Senate in a form that broke Senate rules, and ABC among others are hammering the story hard.

The problem? It's very doubtfully a Republican product.

Rocketman:

The memo has three possible origins. The first possibility is that it was created by a low-level Republican staffer. This seems possible, but highly unlikely. Only a very dim-witted staffer would 1) copy word for word from the Traditional Values site, 2) get the Senate bill number wrong, 3) make a number of silly errors, including misspelling Mrs. Schiavo's name as "Teri," and 4) mix comments about political advantage into a "talking points" memo. Moreover, the Post and ABC have tried to create the impression that the memo is an official, high-level Republican strategy document. It clearly is not that.

The second possibility is that the memo was created by a lobbying group, presumably the Traditional Values Coalition, since most of the content of the memo comes word for word from their web site. But the controversial political observations--"the pro-life base will be excited," etc.--are inappropriate for an organization like the Coalition. They sound as if they are written from the internal perspective of the Republican party ("this is a tough issue for Democrats").

The third possibility is that the memo is a Democratic dirty trick. At the moment, that looks most likely. It is easy to picture how the document could have been constructed. A Democratic staffer wants to put in some language that will sound authentic for a Republican memo. What does he do? He steals four paragraphs from the Coalition's web site. Then he adds the explosive political observations which are the whole point of the exercise--weirdly out of place in a "talking points" memo, but good politics for the Democrats.

This is going to be a fun one to watch. Tune in to the NARN this weekend; no doubt we'll be going over this story in great detail.

Posted by Mitch at March 23, 2005 06:30 PM | TrackBack