Any insight into this one fellow DUers?

[feelthebreeze]

Found this on Raw Story site...

www.rawstory.com

By setting their hopes on a "fake story," Democrats ruined whatever chance they had of keeping Samuel Alito off the Supreme Court, according to Frank Rich in a column slated for Sunday's New York Times, RAW STORY has learned.

While Rich attacks all sides for not "meeting even the low threshold of truthiness" during the confirmation hearings, some of his harshest criticisms are directed at Senator Kennedy and other Democrats for making a big deal out of Alito's membership in a conservative group that's been accused of bigotry. Rich notes that the story had already been exposed as "fake" in The Times. "The Republicans would never have been so sloppy," Rich writes.

This will be Rich's last column until spring. "Starting next week, I will be on a book leave, writing nonfiction about our post-9/11 fictions," Rich informs his readers.
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Excerpts from the article:
#

Once Alito came before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Democrats decided to counter the Republicans' story by coming up with a fictional story of their own, or that's what they did once they stopped bloviating. Their fictional biography cast Alito as an out-and-out bigot.

....

Alito testified that he had joined CAP because it supported the ROTC on campus, adding that he did not remember having "done anything substantial in relation to this group, including renewing my membership." The Democrats plunged on, betting the house (or the Supreme Court) on Teddy Kennedy's insistence that Judge Alito could be linked to what the senator described as CAP's "repulsive anti-woman, anti-black, anti-disability, anti-gay pronouncements." In one of only two dramatic moments in the whole soporific confirmation process -- a "Sunshine Boys"-style spat with the committee chairman, Arlen Specter -- Kennedy threatened to subpoena CAP "documents in the possession of the Library of Congress" to hunt down Alito's bigotry.

There was only one problem with the Democrats' fictional story line: It had been exposed as fake on the front page of The Times weeks before Kennedy presented it to the nation.

....

It says everything about the Democrats' ineptitude that when they spin fiction, they are incapable of meeting even the low threshold of truthiness needed to make it fly in this lax cultural environment.
#

Developing...

[juliana24]

1. Just keep believing any spin the MSM wingers put on a story....

pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

[feelthebreeze]

7. I don't remember the Times calling the story of the membership in

the conservative group from Princeton fake in past weeks. Given that I have not read the times since the election challenge where it was shown to me that they were not any paper of repute by their very loud silence on this historic moment, however, do any of you remember who it was that showed this story to be false and when it was published?

[yellowdoginGA]

9. the story in The Prospect

that kennedy was quoting was apparently a satire piece. they should have focused something else.

[feelthebreeze]

10. Thanks yellowdog in GA. Welcome home. Do you have any links to that?

I am not familiar with the "Prospect".

[yellowdoginGA]

11. don't know links

dsouza(?) a former editor of the prospect said it. i tried like hell to find the story myself but couldn't, so i can't be sure.

[Peanutcat]

2. So . . . . .

Alito must have lied on that job application back then, right?

[mom cat]

5. Exactly, and lying on a federal job application, or saying something to be

seen as a racist, sexist bigot is certainly a mesure of character. Did Clinton make Alito lie on his job application? Did Kennedy? This is just the Times again carrying water for Bush!

[feelthebreeze]

6. Does Rich often become a pundit and shill for the Admin?

I am confused by such an outward attack on the party.

[silverweb]

3. Need a more specific link.

I am unable to find the article you're quoting in Raw Story.

:shrug:

[feelthebreeze]

4. sorry about that, here is a more specific link...

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/NYTs_Frank_Rich_hits_Dems_for_0121.html

[silverweb]

8. Thanks.

Reserving judgment until I read Rich's whole article. Just on the surface, though, the issue appears to be overblown. Alito's entire past history and record are cumulatively abominable; they do not rest on membership in one university alumni group.