Strib lets the NRCC write its copy, again

Back in  October 2006, Kevin Diaz wrote a charming portrait of Gil Gutknecht in which he dutifully repeated GOP talking points about Gutknecht's independence from President Bush and Gingrich, while neglecting to cite any independent analysis of the now-former congressman's maverick status nor solid figures. Indeed, Gingrich had come to Rochester to fundraise for Gutknecht at $1000 head.

We chided him in late October for being unable to find CQ Politics' index.

In his end-of-the-first-year for Walz write up for tomorrow's paper, Diaz cites a 96-percent-voting -with-the-speaker figure, but doesn't provide readers with the source that Republican cite.  Oh, why, it's their own calculation from the NRCC's attack site.

Heh, Strib, if you want to use the NRCC's attacks as authoritative, whatever, but even first-year community college students get dinged when they fail to cite their sources. 

Comments

[MinnesotaCentral]

I take it that your point is the difference between how Diaz has compared Ellison and Walz :

Ellison “scored a 96 percent record of voting with his Democratic majority.”

“Republicans can bolster that case by pointing to Walz's 96 percent record of voting with Democratic leadership positions over the past year.”

Those two comparisions are not the same.

Ellison is compared to the Democratic majority while Walz is the Democratic leadership … the difference is if you define Pelosi as the Democratic leadership, I believe that you will find that Walz and Pelosi both have voted opposite of the Democratic majority. For example Roll Call 1183 (the AMT vote) was 157 to 64 for the Dems. Ellison voted with the Democratic majority but Walz / Pelosi / Hoyer / Emmanual voted against the Democratic majority. In the Hastert/Delay world, very few Republicans would ever vote against the majority of the caucus. Pelosi has let issues be voted on by the members without fear of retribution.

Walz has voted on a number of key votes against the Democratic majority … which in my minds says that he is an “independent leader for Southern Minnesota”.

And in reality with 1186 roll call votes to date, how many are truly important? Diaz should have pointed to just the most significant votes. Why didn’t he compare how Bachmann/Ellison/Walz approached funding and response for disasters in the state … we’ve had a few … it should have been easy but not as easy as interviewing a few critics who can supply all the ammo needed.

As a point of comparison, Diaz should look at Bachmann. There are many examples where she (and John Kline) voted in oppostion to a majority of Republicans … so Walz is outside Minnesota values but Bachmann doesn’t even get a mention even though she is so far outside that she even Republicans don’t agree with her on the issues.

Lastly, this comment by Dick Day "Out of all the people who have represented the district in recent decades, Walz is by far the most liberal," Yeah, Walz is so “liberal” that he voted FOR FISCAL DISCIPLINE after six years of Gil Gutknecht voting for one-year ATM patches that has helped explode the National Debt. Responsible fiscal management says that you have to balance tax cuts with revenues (or spending cuts) … Gutknecht did neither.