Sunday, September 2, 2012

The Weekly Standard: "PolitiFact's Credulous Romney-Ryan Health Care Attacks"

The Weekly Standard's Mark Hemingway once again exemplifies what I'm talking about when I say the criticisms of PolitiFact from the right sustain a higher standard than those from the left.  Hemingway methodically dismantles PolitiFact's facade of misstatements surrounding health care claims by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

Behold as Hemingway warms to his topic:
Perhaps if we all ignore PolitiFact, they'll go away. But for the time being, the supposedly independent organization continues to crank out skewed and partisan work. There's no better example of this than the the current jihad the "fact checking" organization is waging against the Romney-Ryan health care plan.
Hemingway goes on to point out PolitiFact's failure to acknowledge the power of the Independent Payment Advisory Board to implement policies that reduce services for Medicare beneficiaries by decreasing the supply of providers.

He then highlights the mendacity of the Obama campaign and its fact-checking lackey in promoting the claim that Medicare beneficiaries may bear an increased cost of $6,400 per year for Medicare insurance.  The Obama campaign attacked an obsolete version of a Ryan reform,  and PolitiFact evidently granted the Democrats the benefit of the doubt that attacking the old plan was not an attempt to mislead the audience.  The claim in the ad, says PolitiFact, is "Half True."

Hemingway:
PolitiFact presents no evidence that the current Romney-Ryan Medicare plan will costs [sic] seniors anywhere close to $6,000. So how the heck, in the total absen(c)e of evidence, does that statement rate even "half true"?
May I suggest to Hemingway that employing inconsistent standards for judgment can easily assist the opinion journalists at PolitiFact in reaching their apparently partisan conclusions?

Hemingway makes the complex easy to digest, so make the time to read the whole thing.

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