Ah, truthiness. You say it often enough and with enough conviction, and it becomes true. If you're a Republican, anyway. Here's NRSC chair Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) answering a question from Evan Smith, CEO and editor-in-chief of the Texas Tribune, an Austin-based news organization about Sen. Jon Kyl's "not a factual statement" that "well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does" is abortion-related.
When Smith asked Cornyn, chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, about Kyl’s inaccurate statistic, Cornyn took the tactic favored by high-profile birthers of asserting a keen desire to “learn more” about a controversial notion, about which there is already abundant evidence. On whether he agreed with Kyl’s initial claim, Cornyn had this to say:
Well, I’m not so sure. Here I am in the middle of the debate and I’m not so sure. I’ve been told that 98 percent of the services they offer to pregnant women are abortion-related services. I’m not sure, but I think we ought to find out.
[...]
I actually went on Planned Parenthood’s website yesterday to try and see if I could get some good info, and I came up empty.
It actually takes quite a bit of effort to be that disingenuous, particularly since the information about Planned Parenthood's activities was
readily available last week, and is in fact
right there in Planned Parenthood's annual report, available on their
Web site, and in simple graph form, as reproduced here. Or he could have seen it in the
Washington Post, where Ezra Klein wrote about it. Or he could have asked any of his Senate colleagues who support Planned Parenthood for help in finding the information.
So it would be very, very hard for Sen. Cornyn to remain this ignorant, if he really did try. It's almost enough to make you think that Cornyn has no intention of making a factual statement about Planned Parenthood.
