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October 01, 2015 11:12 AM UTC

Even David Harsanyi Can't Defend It

  • 21 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
David Harsanyi.
David Harsanyi.

David Harsanyi was a conservative columnist for the Denver Post for many years. Up until his departure from the Post to take a job with Glenn Beck’s budding media empire in 2011, we had a few occasions of fun times calling out Harsanyi for making silly factual errors and living a life of walking, talking hypocrisy. And of course, once he went to work for Glenn Beck, we pretty much stopped whatever residual taking seriously of him we had ever engaged in.

But we will take note of Harsanyi’s column in The Federalist yesterday, in which he almost rips apart the House GOP’s embarrassing show trial of Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards this week. It begins promisingly enough:

If for some reason you needed additional evidence that the Republican Party was deeply incompetent, unprepared, uncoordinated, inexcusably lazy, then try watching Cecile Richards’ appearance in front of congress yesterday.

Zing! But this is David Harsanyi, so don’t let that initial red-on-red snarkiness fool you:

Now, I get that these kinds of hearings are normally a waste of time, but in this instance the GOP had some good reasons to project competence. This is, after all, the issue that’s generated so much tension within their party of late. An effective showing—something resembling a smart prosecution—might have allayed a bit of the percolating discontent. Yet there they were, facing a CEO whose organization performs vivisections on humans and harvests baby brains, and the best they could do most of the time was throw her softballs or ensure her martyrdom…

It’s worth pointing out that, unlike most of the GOP members of the committee, Richards actually earns her salary. She exhibits impressive composure and rhetorical discipline, never wandering off her chosen focus for too long, and basically does everything someone like Jim Jordan does not. The Ohio rep looked like he was about to hop over the podium grab her by the arms and demand answers. The optics were horrible, and the trivial gotcha that made him act like a transmuting Bruce Banner—whether Richards had actually apologized for the video tapes or not— was also irrelevant.

He could have tricked Richards into acknowledging she had lied when she said that Planned Parenthood “never claimed” to offer mammograms? That would have taken preparation and research rather than yelling. Republicans never, setting aside all the hysterical parsing of the media, got Richards to admit that Carly Fiorina’s comments regarding human fetuses being delivered intact and alive during abortions was irrefutable.

To be clear, this “criticism” is loaded up with pseudo-extenuating hooey. Planned Parenthood conducts breast exams and files the necessary referrals for mammograms–which means that cutting off their funds could certainly cut off access to that procedure if even they’re not done in Planned Parenthood’s offices. And while David Harsanyi may have an interest in running cover for Carly Fiorina’s blatant falsehoods regarding the content of doctored undercover videos attacking Planned Parenthood, basically nobody else does.

Overall, though, reading Harsanyi’s column on Tuesday’s disastrous hearing evoked sympathy from us. It must indeed be frustrating to watch your partisan allies make such profound fools of themselves on national television, then be required to opine about it in a way that preserves at least some of their collective dignity.

We couldn’t do it.

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21 thoughts on “Even David Harsanyi Can’t Defend It”

    1. I don't know what's wrong with that link. Here's another.

      http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/09/29/new-anti-abortion-video-released-titled-carly-fiorina-was-right/

      A baby kicks and squirms moments after it slides from the birth canal in an extremely graphic video released by a pro-life group Tuesday that reportedly shows the abortion of an intact fetus. It’s titled “Carly Fiorina was right.”

      The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform posted the 13-minute video to YouTube, a full version of a clip which Fiorina spoke about during the second Republican presidential debate. The former Hewlett-Packard CEO has been pressed in subsequent interviews about her description of the anti-abortion video, with some members of the media questioning the veracity of the clip and others questioning whether the clip even existed.

      “The video speaks for itself and that’s what’s so powerful about it,” CBR executive director Gregg Cunningham told FoxNews.com. “I don’t have to defend it. No one has to take our characterization for granted. Even a lay person can take a look at it and tell what’s going on.”

      1. This makes me sick on so many levels. So many half truths, hateful assumptions and blatant misdirection from Cunningham and his ilk and conservatives eat it up.

        Anti-abortion conservatives are so happy to see "proof" of a late-term abortion (or a miscarriage) requested by a selfish, liberal whore (or we know nothing about this woman) that was obviously performed by a Planned Parenthood baby-harvester (or we have no idea when or where this happened) so they could get paid for their baby slaughter and donate their blood money to the DNC.

        It is absolutely sickening to think of how many people are so happy to think this way! I'm just waiting until YouTube takes down the video due to its graphic content and these dipshits cry that YouTube is harming their free speech rights.

        1. The discredited pro-birther organization probably hung out at a Tijuana back alley abortion clinic and bribed the doctor that runs the place to let them film some unlucky patient.  Then Fake News trumpets it with their fake outrage because it offends their fake morals.

          And Moddy just eats it up like the obedient fool that he his.

            1. And so with zero evidence supporting Fiorina's version of the story, she continues to insist she saw what she saw.  

              Thus the $100 million ex-CEO (not including an additional $20 million "Go away" package) proves that being a pathological liar is not an impediment to climbing the ladder of business success.  She assumes that politics is no different.  But she'll learn that fooling a pliable Board of Directors for a few years is easier than tens of millions of voters.

              1. Studies do show that those testing in the high range for traits related to psychopathy, for whom lying freely is a matter of course, are over-represented among CEOs. 

      4. Your second link just shows video of the debate with Fiorina making her claims. Here's a link to the actual video. Most of it is a woman describing what she says she saw and heard. Accompanying video doesn't show any of what she describes except a fetus in an advanced stage of development that is moving. There is no audio. You don't see anything but the fetus so there is no way of knowing whether this has anything to do with an abortion. It could be a miscarriage. Nothing to indicate it takes place at a PP clinic. Nobody appears in the video of the fetus saying anything. All that comes from the woman being interviewed and we just have to take her word for it in the context of a video put together by an anti-abortion group. If the video proves anything it's that Fiorina was lying about what she saw and heard in this video. Here you go:

         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANhrgGANa38

          1. You're the one who is asserting the video is real and that it is tied to Planned Parenthood. In this country, those who make accusations have the burden of proof. What is your evidence the video was taken in this country? What is your evidence, the video was made in a Planned Parenthood clinic? What is your evidence this was an abortion instead of a miscarriage? What is your evidence to refute what every medical doctor who has watched the video has said: that the video depicts a fetus at between 17 to 19 weeks and at this time no fetus less than 23 weeks old can survive? What is your evidence that the brain and other organs were harvested for use in research? You made all these assertions about the authenticity of the video, I'm sure you can back each one up with specific verified evidence. Right?

          2. ‘This wasn’t an abortion': CNN forces anti-Planned Parenthood group to admit Fiorina was wrong

            The project lead Center for Medical Progress’ anti-Planned Parenthood campaign, admitted on Wednesday that an alleged fetus on a table that GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina described during a graphic anti-abortion rant was actually from a miscarriage.

            The footage came from a miscarriage! What would you have us do with miscarriages? Make the woman carry the dead fetus around for another few months to make you feel better about yourself?

            1. Ooh! Or even better, doctors could try to keep the 17-month fetus alive and they could watch it struggle to live until it dies shortly after the miscarriage. Would that make you feel better about yourself?

          3. Hey, Moddie … au contraire. It is amazing the depraved lies that a movement conservative or a troll will spread around to serve their cause.  Why let truth get in the way of a great narrative and some really awesome miscarriage visuals?  

            You have really discredited yourself by hitching your star to this particular wagon.  But at least you are in good company.  Seems like Fox News and a big chunk of the GOP is right with you.  

          4. I guess you were probably worried that you hadn’t proven yourself to be a hopelessly ignorant and worthless fucktard to enough folks here already???

          5. Amazing what fools will call fact with no proof. There is nothng in this video that proves it has any connectiion to Planned Parenthood. There is nothing in it but hearsay from a woman not present in the footage of the fetus claiming that she was a direct witness to things she says were done and said.  If Fiorina saw a video in which there were people connected with Planned Parenthood in that room with that fetus doing and saying the things she claims she saw them do and heard them say, instead of only a video in which a woman never shown anywhere near that fetus makes claims about was done and said and by whom, why has no one produced it? 

            Your problem is not that" libruls" will believe anything. It's that intelligent people won't believe what you insist they must believe on the basis of a video that proves none of the claims Fiorina makes in connection with it.

  3. Moderatus: it has been a known fact for some time that a fetus claimed to have been aborted in one of the CMP/Operation Rescue videos was actually a miscarriage fetus from a different state.

    There is an old saying: "that which does not kill you makes you stronger. (I first read this saying in one of Robert E. Howard’s 1930s thrillers about his character, Conan the Barbarian). " Planned Parenthood is surviving the onslaught created by the Operation Rescue thugs and the whole sordid episode is already beginning to fade out. Only the crazies in Congress; in the House Freedom Caucus plus Ted Cruz; and Tim Neville; still think the issue has legs.  

    And maybe you can also tell us that if Parenthood is so evil, how come it’s been cleared of any wrongdoing in several conservative states (Indiana/Kentucky, S. Dakota, Georgia). 

    C.H.B.

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