Bob Somerby is right to ridicule the insipid claim that Karl Rove was talking about liberals, not Democrats, during his speech to the New York Conservative Club. But he gets one thing wrong in quoting this exchange from yesterday's edition of Fox News Sunday:
BILL KRISTOL: Look, what Karl Rove said, what outraged people is when he said, "Al Jazeera is broadcasting the words of Senator Durbin, certainly putting America's men and women in uniform in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals." He is saying -- I mean, that is a very tough and I think inaccurate and -- it's just a bad statement to make.
BRIT HUME: But that's not what --
KRISTOL: I'm sorry, that is. "No more needs to be said --"
HUME: Of course it's not.
KRISTOL: Twenty percent -- 20 to 25 percent of the American people identify themselves as liberals. Are they not patriots, most of them? That is what Karl Rove is saying? "No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals?"
HUME: I think it's -- your indignation about that is interesting. It has very little if anything to do with what liberals were reacting to.
Somerby then added:
But as web-readers know, liberals were responding to that statement all week! Only a consummate hack like Hume could just keep denying the obvious.
But here's the rest of Hume's statement, which Somerby omitted (continuing directly from above):
HUME: Here is what actually happened. He made this talk in front of -- with almost no coverage in front of the Conservative Party meeting in New York. A tiny little cable operation, which serves New York City, called New York One, was the only news organization there.
A single sound bite from that speech is what was extracted, and it was not the one you're talking about. It was the one about the difference in the reaction to 9/11 that was -- and that was the whole source of the controversy.
I doubt very seriously if any of those senators reacting on Capitol Hill knew the full context of what he said. If they had, they would've known he was talking about moveon.org.
Now, again the point that Rove was only talking about MoveOn.org and Michael Moore is ridiculous. But Hume is right that almost no one has addressed Rove's suggestion that liberals want to put US troops in danger -- it has been largely ignored by both the press and the Democrats who have criticized Rove.
PS Props to Bill Kristol for noting the vicious and unfair implications of Rove's statement.
Update 6/27: Video of the exchange is available here.
Update 6/28: Media Matters tracks people repeating the "liberals, not Democrats" line here.
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