The Paul Begala myth

James Taranto of Opinion Journal's Best of the Web Today is the latest figure to tout the myth that Paul Begala accused Republicans of wanting to kill him.

But as August J. Pollak showed, while Begala did switch between using the imprecise pronoun "they" to refer to Republicans and using it to refer to terrorists, it is clear in context that the phrase "They want to kill me and my children" referred to terrorists:

...[W]e sit back and allow George W. Bush and our Republican friends to pull out 9/11 like a cheap handgun in a bar fight. Okay? "9/11." There's a drought in the Midwest. "9/11." The deficit's up. "9/11" You know? But, I think we need to fight them on that. I think, frankly they did a piss-poor job of defending us, and their strategy was always "we'll fight them over there so we don't fight them here." Well guess what, bin Laden didn't get the memo. He wants to fight us here as well as we saw in London last week. And so, the- their theory is, "we can't really do everything to protect our country because we have to cut taxes for the rich." And so, it... they want to kill us- particularly this city and New York and some other places. I was driving past the pentagon when that plane hit. I had friends on that plane, this is deadly serious to me- they want to kill me and my children if they can. But if they just kill me and not my children, they want my children to be comforted that while they didn't protect me because they cut my taxes, my children won't have to pay any money on the money they inherit. You know, that is bullshit national defense and we should say that. (MP3 audio)

Update 8/4: Nony Mouse points out in comments that Taranto corrected himself yesterday.

Comments

[Nony Mouse]

Yesterday, or the day after he first posted this, Taranto had realized his mistake, and issued a correction
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110007053

[William Stewart]

It is not clear at all that he was referring to terrorists and not Republicans. The way Democrats are getting rabid these days, I wouldn't be surprised if he was, in fact, referring to Republicans wanting to kill him. His sentence structure is so horrendous, it is not definite who he was referring to and makes it a stretch to write he was clearly referring to terrorists.