Three moments, actually:
—NBC‘s Chuck Todd yesterday on Meet the Press (12/10/11), commenting on Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich:
Well, first of all, those are a couple of nimble debaters. They are pretty good. I think we have seen it. This is the final two.
I’m old enough to remember when Todd had the campaign narrowed down to a Top Three, way back in August: “We have a top tier. It is Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann.”
—ABC host Diane Sawyer, asked to describe (This Week, 12/11/11) the most revealing lesson she learned about the candidates after she moderated a debate this weekend:
The vitality on the stage. We said at the beginning the marathon run it is to run for president. But I have to tell you, first of all, they have great immune systems…. They came out strapping, they came out ready…. I think you can’t always experience on television just the sheer physical vitality of all these candidates.
–The New York Times reports (12/11/11) that a story about Newt Gingrich featured an anonymous source rebutting criticisms of him. Turns out that source was… Newt Gingrich.
Even though Mr. Gingrich publicly insists that he will take the high road with a positive campaign that does not criticize other Republicans, he recently strayed from that vow, offering himself as an anonymous source in a New Hampshire newspaper last week to reply to criticism by John H. Sununu, a former aide to President George H.W. Bush who, as a Romney surrogate, has called Mr. Gingrich “untrustworthy and unprincipled.”
Mr. Sununu told the newspaper, the Union Leader, that Mr. Gingrich supported a tax increase deal that the first President Bush made with Democrats in 1990, then reversed himself. The newspaper, quoting a source identified as “a senior aide in the Gingrich campaign,” elaborately rebutted this account.
[Gingrich spokesman R.C] Hammond said the source was actually Mr. Gingrich, who did not want to be identified to avoid the impression he was getting into a fight with the Romney camp.
“I’m old enough to remember when Todd had the campaign narrowed down to a Top Three, way back in August: ‘We have a top tier. It is Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann.'”
Yeahbut why do you have to keep looking backwards? Look to the future, and let us heal!
Technically, if the rebuttal was elaborate, the NYT isn’t wrong. A rebuttal isn’t the same as a refutation. However, NYT treating the campaign as credible and using the word “elaborate” without quoting him is obviously extremely deceptive.