Brendan Nyhan

Hatch dissembles on Obama’s agenda

Senator Orrin Hatch has written a NRSC fundraising email that misrepresents Barack Obama’s position on the Fairness Doctrine and defense spending (ellipses in original):

Barack Obama and MoveOn.org need Jim Martin to seize complete control of government.

And to thank them, Martin has promised to rubberstamp Obama’s far-left agenda…

… Liberal activist Supreme Court justices, over $1 trillion in new spending, censorship of conservative talk radio and a crushing 25% cut to our military.

“[C]ensorship of conservative talk radio” is a reference to proposals to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. However, doing so is not part of “Obama’s far-left agenda” — Obama’s campaign specifically disavowed any support for the proposal back in June. Similarly, the proposal to cut 25% from the defense budget comes from Rep. Barney Frank, not Obama. Unless Hatch has evidence to show that Obama supports either proposal, he’s just making things up.

Update 11/18 9:31 PM: In comments, David suggests a possible alternative rationale for the censorship claim:

According to some, their have also been suggestions to censor conservative talk radio by the use of localism complaints. See http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/11/obama_declares_war_on_conserva.html