On Sunday, The New York Times headlined the government shutdown by blaming – who else? – the Koch brothers. “A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning,” the headline blared. The piece itself, by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Mike McIntire, was a mash-up of conspiratorial thinking and adolescent hatred:
Shortly after President Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy. Their push to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care law was going nowhere, and they desperately needed a new plan.
What was the big secret these bigwigs were planning while presumably smoking stogies?
Out of that session, held one morning in a location the members insist on keeping secret, came a little-noticed “blueprint to defunding Obamacare,” signed by Mr. Meese and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups. It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health care overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off financing for the entire federal government.
Then the kicker:
Last week the country witnessed the fallout from that strategy: a standoff that has shuttered much of the federal bureaucracy and unsettled the nation.
And so the Times blames corrupt Republican officials in league with shifty coalition members for the government shutdown – not President Obama, who has refused all negotiations, or Harry Reid, who recently proclaimed that one child with cancer was not his chief worry if he had federal employees furloughed. The Times further stretches to link this particular meeting with, among others, anti-Obamacare groups like the Tea Party Patriots, Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks, Club for Growth, Heritage Action, and the Koch brothers. Buried deep in the article is the admission that Freedom Partners, associated with the Koch brothers, has not pushed to shut down the government over Obamacare. Even the Daily Beast acknowledges that the Koch brothers oppose the shutdown. Oops.
The Times also blames Republicans for repeating the line that “Obamacare is a train wreck” – a line first uttered by Obamacare author Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT).
To date, the Times has written no stories about the pressure leftist groups and media types are bringing to bear on the Obama administration to allow the shutdown to continue until Republicans abandon all demands.
