Posted yesterday on Townhall.com ("Townhall.com is the #1 conservative website."), I found this little gem of conservative ‘journalism’: Coleman Reflects on Recount by Amanda Carpenter ("Townhall.com’s National Political Reporter"). Poor Norm, it would seem, is not a happy camper.
"It’s frustrating because you would hope, as I humbly do, that you have something to add to the debate and be a part of the discussion, both back in DC and also back home," Coleman told me in a private interview.
Former Senator Coleman is an amazing man, maintaining such a humble attitude in spite of the fact that, as he said last week, "God wants me to serve."
Indeed, it is understandable that the Coleman campaign is trying (although unsuccessfully) to get those rejected absentee ballots counted: once they find the one cast by God, the tide is sure to turn in the recount.
Now, back to the Townhall reporting on former Senator Norm Coleman. Carpenter writes
To help, Coleman’s campaign has launched a website for Minnesota voters to help them find out if their votes have been counted or not. Coleman campaign lists the names of voters, by county, whose absentee ballots have not been counted on the site. The first day it went live so many people visited that it went down.
Wow, that is some intrepid reporting! Those disenfranchised Minnesotans must number in the millions! In fact, I think I remember reading something about this a few days back. Oh yeah, it was all a scam concocted by the Coleman campaign. In any case, I’m sure Ms. Carpenter was too busy conducting in-depth original research on the recount to be able to find out this little fact.
Case in point, Carpenter discovered the following astonishing information. (Keep in mind that out of the about 11,000 rejected ballots, the Coleman team has selected 4,700 for 'recount'.)
Most of the 4,700 rejected absentee ballots that remain to be counted are believed to lean Republican. The St. Paul Pioneer Press analyzed the sources of those ballots and found that of the 4,739 ballots that will be considered, 3,015 come from areas that voted for Coleman in November. Roughly a third of those ballots are from areas that voted for Coleman by more than 55 percent.
I checked Carpenter’s account against the Pioneer Press articlewhich she cites, and found this:
Of the 4,739 ballots Coleman wants the court to consider, 3,015 come from areas that voted for him over Franken in the Nov. 4 election. About a third of the ballots are from areas that gave Coleman more than 55 percent of their votes.
Isn’t that amazing?! On February 13, Townhall’s major political reporter came to the identical conclusion - even using even the same words - as the Pioneer Press report of February 9!
If there are still any skeptics out there who still question the investigative acumen of Townhall’s ace journalist, I leave you with this. Carpenter notes that
Coleman’s critics accuse him of "cherry-picking" ballots, but most of the metro areas, that typically lean Democratic, have already been painstakingly recounted.
The earlier Pioneer Press article had observed
Inside and outside the courtroom, Coleman's attorneys have repeatedly said they didn't "cherry-pick" the ballots. That is, the ballots made it to the list because the legal team honestly believes they are valid and should be counted.
But a Pioneer Press analysis of the counties and cities the ballots come from shows those areas overwhelmingly favor Coleman.
See the difference? The findings of the original Pioneer Press article imply that the Coleman campaign did indeed "cherry-pick" ballots from pro-Coleman areas. But thanks to Carpenter's new investigation, we now know that Pioneer Press had it exactly backward. The pro-Coleman bias of these ballots is simply evidence of Norm’s desire for electoral fairness.
Amanda Carpenter of Townhall.com, I hereby nominate you for embodying all of the most fundamental principles of conservative ‘journalism’: total incompetence, dishonesty, and crude plagiarism.