Uh-oh. Someone just passed a fact….

Why do people read political blogs?

Certain news events have done much to enhance public perception that blogs were ahead of the curve. In 2006, former Virginia Sen. George Allen’s "macaca moment" was showcased by Daily Kos and other liberal or progressive blogs and is credited with derailing the Republican’s bid for re-election.

Power Line was among a handful of conservative blogs that provided clear evidence disproving a CBS News report questioning President Bush’s Vietnam-era military service during the 2004 presidential campaign. The blog has since become a mainstay in many Republican news diets, perhaps due to a long-standing journalistic credo.

"Why do people read us? It goes back to the idea that we present a solid core of facts, and argue within those facts. There are a lot of bloggers who tend to spout off about their feelings and reactions. Some are terrific writers and a fun read. Our approach is to be more analytic," said John H. Hinderaker, one of three writers for Power Line, which was proclaimed "Blog of the Year" by Time Magazine after the CBS scoop.

"Solid core of facts" regarding the Schiavo memo:

ABC News and the Washington Post have described–but not actually produced–a memorandum relating to the Terri Schiavo case which they have described as "GOP talking points" that were "distributed only to Republican Senators." Many other news outlets have picked up on ABC’s and the Post’s reporting, such as this Houston Chronicle article, which relies in part on the memo to support a bitter attack on the Republican Party:

Most interesting is a talking-points memo from the Senate side of the Capitol that spells it right out in stark electoral terms: "the pro-life base will be excited" and "this is a great political issue, this is a tough issue for Democrats."

We have written about the alleged "talking points memo" here, here, and here.

We have expressed skepticism about the authenticity of the "talking points" memo; the most recent developments have only served to heighten our skepticism.

[...]

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.

Further, this could explain why the scanned version of the document is different from the one that ABC News originally obtained. The document was apparently corrected in three respects between the time it was given to ABC and when it was leaked to a left-wing web site. Who cleaned up the memo? Presumably the person or persons who created it. The site that put up the jpeg of the memo said that "a source on Capitol Hill…leaked" it to them. The source was presumably a Democratic staffer. If the document was a genuine Republican memo, would the Democrat who leaked it onto the web take the trouble to re-create it, correcting typos? No. The leaker would only correct errors if he himself was the source of the memo.

And finally: as the New York Times has reported, the only people who have actually been seen passing out the memo are Democratic aides.

The evidence we have so far is not conclusive, but it points in the direction of a dirty trick by the Democrats. The onus is certainly on Mike Allen of the Post and ABC News, if they actually have evidence that the memo is genuine, to tell us what that evidence is. In any event, however, the suggestion that this is some kind of high-level Republican strategy memo is ludicrous.

That won’t stop the Democrats from trying to make political hay out of it, however. The same left-wing site that published the memo now says:

Hoping to determine who distributed talking points to GOP senators on how they could capitalize on the Schiavo tragedy, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) will send a letter to the Rules Committee today calling for an investigation. Reports suggest the points could have been circulated on the Senate floor, violating Senate Rules….

Are the Democrats moving to capitalize on their own hoax?

Unfortunately, they were wrong.

In all fairness, this did happen during that week when the Kernmaster 4000™ was in the shop.