Media fail: 'Regular' mom in SOTU speech former Dem. operative for Patty Murray
Barack Obama with Rebekah Erler.
Mandel Ngan, AFP/Getty Images
During Tuesday night's State of the Union
speech, President Obama spoke of a struggling mother of two from
Minneapolis who wrote him a touching letter describing her struggle as a
middle-class person. Obama even said the story of her and her husband
was “the reason I ran for this office.” But it turns out that Rebekah
Erler, the woman who wrote that letter to Obama, is a former Democratic
campaign operative who worked as a field organizer for Sen. Patty
Murray, D-Wash., and worked on Obama's 2008 campaign, Newsbusters reported Wednesday. Worse yet, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune failed to mention that in its glowing article.
Newsbusters' P.J. Gladnick said the information was not all that hard to find. Last June, for example, a Reuters article said that Erler's LinkedIn profile said she once served as a field organizer for Murray. A GOP press release from the same time period also exposed the information.
So why would President Obama and his allies in the media keep this information from the public? And why would Obama feel the need to fool the country with such a ruse?
Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh said Wednesday she was used as a plant to portray an average American citizen who allegedly struggled to make ends meet before Obama came along. And, Limbaugh added, even if Erler's story is real, "then what the hell are the Democrats doing paying their employee so little?"
"What does it say about the Democrats if the people that work for 'em are in such dire economic straits and hardship?" he asked. "But the real question is: Why not go out and find a real story? Why not go out and find a real American family, 'cause they ought to be popping ... all over the place out there."
But the plot thickens. According to Gladnick, Allison Sherry, the author of the Star-Tribune story, failed to reveal that Rebekah Erler was a Democrat operative because she "has a long history of acting as an unofficial Democrat operative." Colorado Peak Politics, he added, "has a huge catalog of Sherry's liberal biases while working on behalf of the Democrats at the Denver Post."
It's not the first time Obama has tried to pull a fast one on the American people. In August 2012, we reported that an Obama ad attempted to portray a Republican woman who allegedly supported Obama because of the GOP position on women's issues. But it turned out that Maria Ciano, the woman in that ad, had been a registered Democrat since October 2006.
The Obama campaign was also caught in a lie over Joe Soptic, the man in the now infamous "Romney killed my wife" ad put out by Priorities USA. After questions arose regarding the ad, the Obama campaign said it had no knowledge of his story. But it turned out that that Soptic was on a conference call with deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter on May 4, 2012.
These are just a few of the whoppers Obama has told the American people. The biggest lie so far -- Obama's repeated promise that Americans could keep their health insurance if they liked it -- was designated the "Lie of the Year" for 2013 by Politifact.
Newsbusters' P.J. Gladnick said the information was not all that hard to find. Last June, for example, a Reuters article said that Erler's LinkedIn profile said she once served as a field organizer for Murray. A GOP press release from the same time period also exposed the information.
So why would President Obama and his allies in the media keep this information from the public? And why would Obama feel the need to fool the country with such a ruse?
Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh said Wednesday she was used as a plant to portray an average American citizen who allegedly struggled to make ends meet before Obama came along. And, Limbaugh added, even if Erler's story is real, "then what the hell are the Democrats doing paying their employee so little?"
"What does it say about the Democrats if the people that work for 'em are in such dire economic straits and hardship?" he asked. "But the real question is: Why not go out and find a real story? Why not go out and find a real American family, 'cause they ought to be popping ... all over the place out there."
But the plot thickens. According to Gladnick, Allison Sherry, the author of the Star-Tribune story, failed to reveal that Rebekah Erler was a Democrat operative because she "has a long history of acting as an unofficial Democrat operative." Colorado Peak Politics, he added, "has a huge catalog of Sherry's liberal biases while working on behalf of the Democrats at the Denver Post."
It's not the first time Obama has tried to pull a fast one on the American people. In August 2012, we reported that an Obama ad attempted to portray a Republican woman who allegedly supported Obama because of the GOP position on women's issues. But it turned out that Maria Ciano, the woman in that ad, had been a registered Democrat since October 2006.
The Obama campaign was also caught in a lie over Joe Soptic, the man in the now infamous "Romney killed my wife" ad put out by Priorities USA. After questions arose regarding the ad, the Obama campaign said it had no knowledge of his story. But it turned out that that Soptic was on a conference call with deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter on May 4, 2012.
These are just a few of the whoppers Obama has told the American people. The biggest lie so far -- Obama's repeated promise that Americans could keep their health insurance if they liked it -- was designated the "Lie of the Year" for 2013 by Politifact.
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