Outing McClellan

Scott McClellan's book "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception." has been all the rage in liberal circles for the last week or so. They are eating up the fact that McClellan spent lots of words on the Valerie Plame case, and wishing Karl Rove had been fired over it.

They guy who printed Plame's name, Robert Novak, has his take on the book in today's column, and calls out McClellan for his lack of facts about the Plame affair.

Novak points out the inconsistencies between the former White House Press Secretary's book, and the reality of the leak, and the Grand Jury investigation into it.

While at the White House podium, McClellan never knew the facts about the CIA leak, and his memoir reads as though he has tried to maintain his ignorance. He omits the fact that Armitage identified Mrs. Wilson to The Post's Bob Woodward weeks before he talked to me. He does not mention that Armitage turned himself in to the Justice Department even before Patrick Fitzgerald was named as special prosecutor.

In case the liberals out there have forgotten, Rove, and Scooter Libby, weren't the leakers of Plame's name. It was Richard Armitage, a guy who didn't like the Iraq war or Dick Cheney. Novak also points out another fact McClellan omits, no one was convicted of outing Plame, even though the Justice Department had a confession from Armitage that he'd been the guy to mention her name.

When you start reading the facts; instead of McClellan, and his publisher's wishful thinking; you realize more and more that the book wasn't a "tell all" about the White House, but instead a smear job without much basis in reality, written by a disgruntled guy who was fired.

It becomes more clear when you follow the trail of the publisher, who McClellan told Ari Fleischer (his predecessor) had "tweaked" the book. The publishing house, Public Affairs Books, is largely owned by Democratic activist George Soros!

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Smacking Down Newsweek

John McCain's campaign evidently wasn't too happy with Newsweeks recent Obama-gasm cover story. So, Mark Salter, one of McCain's senior advisors decided to shoot off a response to the story to Newsweek. To their credit they printed it, since it paints them (rightfully so) in a horribly biased light.

Salter calls out not only Newsweeks shoddy job of reporting and fact checking, but the Obama campaign, DNC and a few 527 groups and Unions. It's about time someone did.

In the letter Salter, and McCain's team basically tossed off the gloves, and said enough tap dancing around. Instead of asking talk radio folks to shut up when they decided to scream "Barack HUSSEIN Obama", it sounds as though McCain's will probably ignore it, and let Obama deal with it.

When the NC GOP wants to run montages of Rev. Wright and Obama, instead of asking them not to McCain is probably going to use the DNC line on 527's and state parties "we really don't have any control over them".

Newsweeks article also let out the Obama (and general Democratic) complaints about the "GOP Smear Machine"®. That phrase got a lot of traction in 2004 with the "Swift Boating" of John Kerry. But, as Salter points out, the Democrats, not the GOP were the recipients of most 527 money in 2004. (They still are by a large margin)

In fact, the top liberal 527 in 2004 raised more than twice as much money as the top 2 conservative 527's. The top 5 liberal 527's outraised the top 5 conservative 527 by nearly $225 million. Here's Open Secrets list of the to 50 federally focused 527's from the 2004 cycle.

Which brings me to another of Salters points. If the liberals are outspending conservatives by those amounts to get their message out, and still lose elections, maybe it's the message.

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