Sorry about
this post, by the way - that should have gone into the Obama thread
Well, it's official - Dick Morris did indeed f*ck up, sending us on a wild goose chase as he did. Blatham posted the news on the Obama thread:
blatham wrote:Quote:Off the Mark
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 18, 2007; 9:58 AM
"Obama's First Blunder," the headline said.
It turned out instead to be Dick Morris's first blunder of the 2008 campaign.
The political strategist turned Fox News commentator had a column in The Hill yesterday, accusing Barack Obama of an "inexplicable pro-nepotism vote."
The Illinois Democrat's offense? "He joined only a handful of Democrats in opposing a Senate reform banning the increasingly widespread practice of legislators hiring their family members on their campaign or PAC payrolls," Morris wrote. [..]
"Why did he vote against it?" Morris added on "Hannity & Colmes." "Because Jesse Jackson's son has his wife on his House payroll, and he didn't want to get him mad at him."
A pretty good issue, if true. But Obama voted for the amendment in question. Morris was flat-out wrong.
He's right about the amendment. Putting relatives on campaign payrolls reeks of impropriety. But Morris is not much of a vote-counter. [..]
Says Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor: "Dick obviously took a ready-fire-aim approach when he wrote this column. Hopefully next time he'll check his facts before criticizing a politician for a position he didn't take."
Morris does the right thing this morning by posting a mea culpa: "I want to retract the allegations in my column yesterday that criticized Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for voting against a bill to prohibit campaign committees and PACs from paying spouses and relatives. In fact, he voted against tabling the bill.
"I sincerely apologize to the senator for my mistaken reading of the record and want to commend him for his correct vote on the issue, unlike the majority of his fellow Democrats, including likely presidential candidates Sens. Joseph Biden Jr. (D-Del.), Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.)."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/01/18/BL2007011800327.html
Whoa!
(I'm sure I've said this before, but I wince everytime I see the title of this thread. Bad karma! Very bad karma!)
