Posted by Warner Todd Huston Feb 27th 2012 at 9:10 am in Democrats/progressives, Editorialism, GOP, Mainstream Media, Obama, Old media, Politico, Print Journalism, energy, journalism, media bias, newspapers Last week we all got a great lesson in how the left promotes a lie to make Republicans the enemy and this time President Obama was a chief participant.
This is how the game is played: the left-leaning media establishment makes a claim about how rotten
Republicans are and Obama then echoes the claim and presents it as the true state of Republican opposition to his policies. The result is that we have a partisan opinion foisted on the public as truth about how mean the GOP is to this poor, well-meaning president. A false media narrative is established by the partisan press, politician adds said meme to a policy speech, presto-chango, a political “fact” is born. But it’s all just a partisan hit job masquerading as fact.
We are talking, of course, about President Obama’s claim that the GOP is “licking their chops” over the bad news of high gas prices. This is the line uttered by the president in his most misleading energy speech delivered in Florida on February 23rd.
In that speech, President Obama claimed that Republicans were happy that gas prices were hurting Americans. Obama intended to show that Republicans didn’t care that America was hurting, happy they could use it as a political tool to hurt the president and his well-meaning policies.
Here is what he said:
“Some politicians, they see this as a political opportunity. I know you’re shocked by that. Last week the lead story in one newspaper said, ‘Gasoline prices are on the rise and Republicans are licking their chops.’ That’s a quote. That was the lead. Licking their chops. Only in politics do people root for bad news. Do they greet bad news so enthusiastically.”Note how Obama uses the partisan slam, published in “one newspaper” written by a left-wing writer and presents this as fact about how Republicans feel about rising gas prices. Note that Obama didn’t quote any actual Republican saying rising gas prices is a good thing. He quoted one of his own follower’s partisan claims and then assigned that false narrative to his political enemies.
In your college debate class you’d call this a strawman argument. Using the claim of a partisan to represent the enemy’s position is what the rest of us usually call a lie.
This “one newspaper” from which Obama claims to quote is likely the left-leaning website Politico whose February 16th story begins with the line, “Gasoline prices are on the rise, and Republicans are licking their chops.”
It was Politico that said Republicans are “licking their chops,” not any Republicans.
Tellingly, not one of the reports in the news over the ensuing days tried to track down what “one newspaper” Obama was claiming to quote. It almost seems as if the rest of the Old Media assumed he was lying about the quote, but didn’t much care anyway because the slam on Republicans was too good to check.
Obama continued with his false narrative:
“You pay more, they’re licking their chops. And you can bet that since it’s an election year, they’re already dusting off their three-point plan for $2 gas. And I’ll save you the suspense. Step one is to drill and step two is to drill and then step three is to keep drilling. We heard the same line in 2007 when I was running for president. We hear the same thing every year. We’ve heard the same thing for 30 years. Well, the American people aren’t stupid. They know that’s not a plan, especially since we’re already drilling. That’s a bumper sticker, it’s not a strategy to solve our energy problem.”Investor’s Business Daily called this a “whopper” of a speech and noted at least five areas that Obama simply didn’t tell America the whole truth.
In fact, the president has been one of the biggest cheerleaders for higher energy prices.
Over at Rat’s Blog, Michael notes that gasoline was at a low of $1.91 a gallon in some parts of the country when he took office, now gas it’s about $3.39 per gallon, he gives us a very useful list of Obama’s real energy policies, ideas that are tailor made to increase our gas prices and hurt America.
Some of Obama’s latest policies:
- December 1, 2010 – Obama re-imposes and expands the moratorium on offshore energy production. Gas is $2.86 a gallon.
- January 2, 2011 – TIME reports that the Obama Regime issued the first in a series of regulations designed to unilaterally impose a national energy tax. Gas is $3.05 a gallon.
- May 5, 2011 – The Regime issues a formal statement opposing House-passed Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act (H.R. 1230), and Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work Act (H.R. 1229) legislation designed to jumpstart American energy production, address rising gas prices, and help create new jobs. Gas is $3.96 a gallon.
- June 21, 2011 – The Regime opposes the House-passed Jobs & Energy Permitting Act that would unlock an estimated 27 billion barrels of oil and 132 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Gas is $3.65 a gallon.
- November 8, 2011 – The Regime releases a plan for a five-year moratorium on offshore energy production, placing “some of the most promising energy resources in the world off-limits,” according to the House Natural Resources Committee. Gas is $3.42 a gallon.
- January 18, 2012 – Obama rejects the bipartisan Keystone XL pipeline and the more than 20,000 jobs that would come with it. Gas is $3.39 a gallon.
Let us also not forget that Obama was earnestly attempting to make our electric prices “necessarily skyrocket” back in 2007 when he was running for president. This president has a long track record of trying to hurt America with higher energy prices.
The upshot of this whole speech is that Obama used the claims of liberals about what Republicans think, presented that false narrative as “fact,” then lambasted Republicans based on those false claims. On top of that he went on with his speech ignoring his own actions that contributed to the problem he is pretending he’ll solve, then presented policy ideas to “fix” the problem he arguably caused.
Yet, no one in the media points out this false line of attack. The Old Media merely reported it straight on as if it were all simply a fact-based policy speech instead of a screed full of calumnies and lies. But this is the way
Obama carries on in every speech he makes. He makes false claims of his enemies then goes on as if the claims are fact.
When will the media call this president on his nonsense?
Big Journalism
