Right Wing Caught Attributing Views in Fake Thesis to Obama

The conservative movement has become so intellectually and morally bankrupt that they they only way they can get followers is to invent facts and lie about the views of others. Fortunately for conservative pundits, fact checking is a very rare thing among conservatives, allowing them to  generally get away with making up whatever they wish. When they were caught yesterday they still tried to deny reality.

Steve Benen describes how, “Right-wing pundit Michael Ledeen published an item this week on Barack Obama’s “college thesis,” which Obama allegedly wrote as a student at Columbia 25 years ago.” Apparently the right wingers forgot that they already expressed outrage towards Obama’s thesis on nuclear disarmament, ignoring the fact that he was expressing views similar to those of Ronald Reagan.

The imaginary new thesis fit into their absurd claims that Obama is a socialist with fabricated lines such as:

“…the Constitution allows for many things, but what it does not allow is the most revealing. The so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom. While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned. While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy.”

Rush Limbaugh jumped aboard this hoax. Alex Koppelman reports:

Limbaugh was, naturally, up in arms about this, calling the college-aged Obama a “little boy,” and saying, “he still shares those same feelings.”

Actually reading Obama’s views on the economy would make it clear that the views they attribute to Obama are radically different from Obama’s actual views, but the right wing never worries about the facts.

There were many ways to determine with even minimal fact checking that this claim was a fake. This includes following the link to the web site which Ledeen used as a source. The source information is tagged “satire.”

Joe Klein was also cited as a source. Klein wrote that “It is completely false.” After receiving an apology he commented:

Michael Ledeen now has apologized to me on his blog, claiming that he, Limbaugh and others were punked by a satire. I appreciate the apology…but I wonder about what the willingness to take this cheesy crap as gospel says about Ledeen’s–and Boss Rush’s–sensibility. Actually, on second thought, I don’t wonder all that much.

The right wing will continue to attack Obama and all other liberals based not upon their actual beliefs but based upon a set of beliefs they have invented and falsely attributed to Obama and other liberals. They know that nobody in their right mind, and certainly nobody without a very depraved set of values, would chose their views over the actual views of liberals.

1 Comment

  1. 1
    Sam Kaufman says:

    it looks like Rush Limbaugh has proven himself to be too eager a nay-sayer

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