Lunatic Fringe
It's kind of sad and pathetic, really
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That’s exactly what they tried to do in a Florida press release this week where they attacked Florida Rep. Patrick Murphy, calling him a flip-flopper for voting for Obamacare in 2010 and then voting to delay the Obamacare mandates this year. The press release said in part:
“Rep. Murphy voted for the law back in 2010, yet he reversed himself and voted to delay both the employer mandate (in keeping with President Obama’s decision) and the individual mandate.”Of course, if they had actually done any research on the topic before rushing their attack out to the world, they would have seen that Florida Rep. Patrick Murphy hadn’t even been elected to Congress yet in 2010 — he was just elected for the first time last year, defeating tea party darling Allen West for the seat.
So how in the world could Florida Rep. Patrick Murphy have somehow magically voted for Obamacare if he hadn’t even been elected to Congress? Ahh, this is where the story gets absolutely delicious. Rep. Patrick Murphy did actually vote for Obamacare in 2010… That would be Pennsylvania Rep. Patrick Murphy, who is no longer a member of Congress after losing his seat in the 2010 election. Former Pennsylvania Rep. Murphy has absolutely no relation to current Florida Rep. Murphy.
So here you have the Koch-backed Americans For Prosperity not bothering to do any actual research to verify the garbage they’re putting out to the public, accusing current Rep. Patrick Murphy of being a hypocritical flip-flopper based off of a vote that he never participated in, and couldn’t have participated in even if he wanted to, because he hadn’t been elected to Congress yet when it happened.
All this would have required is a ten second Google search to show that the two Rep. Murphy’s are two totally different people. But that’s too difficult for the Kochs and their allies — especially when it comes to the need for quick and impactful propaganda that can be easily spoon-fed to an eager and gullible public. And most especially when it involves evil, Socialist Obamacare.
Politifact ended up contacting Americans For Prosperity to see what the heck they were smoking when coming up with this press release. (As a side note, they gave the statement a “mostly false” rating. “Mostly false,” seriously? AFP literally rewrote history and put a Congressman in office two years before he was ever elected, and that only gets a “mostly false” rating? Give me a damn break! But I digress…)
From their fact-check:
We asked an Americans for Prosperity spokesman if it had mixed up Patrick Murphys.Who cares about facts, right?
“Yes, that’s an error, it was a mix-up with Murphy from PA. We sent out a corrected release a couple minutes later,” spokesman Christopher Neefus told PolitiFact Florida in an email July 24.
…In this case, when we looked at AFP’s newsroom page about Florida on July 24, it still contained the press release with the wrong information about Murphy.
Obviously the Kochs and Americans For Prosperity don’t, as evidenced by their ridiculous ad against Obamacare, and their sensationalized over-the-top ad against the minimum wage (yes, if you make over $34,000 per year, you’re part of the 1%… of the world!)
This latest embarrassment is just another example proving the fact that the far right couldn’t care less about the truthfulness of what they talk about, as long as it makes an impact. As long as it can be sold with little effort to a tea party base that’s ravenous for more reasons to hate Democrats and President Obama. As long as it fits neatly within the realm of Faux News and dittohead talking points.
Who needs pesky facts when you’re perfectly content climbing Bullshit Mountain?
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