Worst Fake Quote Ever

For the last few days, Republicans and GOP-friendly commentators have been alleging, without citing any evidence whatsoever to back it up, that the timing of the Foley scandal was orchestrated by Democratic operatives as an "October surprise." Denny Hastert himself has, on several occasions now, engaged in this same paranoid speculation.

Well, the American Spectator magazine has finally come forward with irrefutable evidence to back up this accusation. Yes, they've somehow managed to secure several anonymous incriminating quotes from "DNC operatives." Skeptical? Well, you should be. Even if you didn't know anything about this scandal, the quotes alone ought to be enough to trip any rational person's bullshit detector:

According to one political consultant with ties to the DNC and other party organizations, "I'm hearing the Foley story wasn't supposed to drop until about ten days out of the election. It was supposed the coup de grace, not the first shot."

Wow, it must be true if an anonymous "political consultant with ties to the DNC" was "hearing" about it from someone (and then telling the American Spectator). But it gets better. The following quote is attributed to a "DNC operative":

"They [the Republicans] were holding in Missouri and possibly within reach of Maryland and Washington. We were looking at a disaster in the making." So how to remedy? "You pull out the bright shiny things that distract the average American voter away from the issues we all know they care about -- national security, anti-terrorism -- and focus on the ugly: Foley and Iraq."

That's got to be the worst fake quote ever. Do they really expect us to believe that a DNC operative told them that the midterms were looking like a "disaster in the making"? Or that this anonymous operative said that the Democratic plan was to "distract the average American voter away from the issues we all know they care about"?

Please. Do you really take us for such rubes? If you're going to make up a quote, at least make it a little more believable.

And in case you had any doubt that this Spectator piece is a complete crock, I point you toward this interesting piece by Ken Silverstein at Harper's, which blows the GOP conspiracy theories completely out of the water. Silverstein, who had written a piece about Foley months ago that Harper's decided not to publish, explores how the story was leaked to various media outlets. He notes that his source was a Democrat who had received his information from Republican Hill staffers and was not a part of any organized effort. He also states that ABC's source was someone who is "scrupulously non-partisan." Here's the money quote from the piece:

If this was all a plot to hurt the G.O.P.’s chances in the midterm elections, why did the original source for the story begin approaching media outlets a full year ago? If either of the Florida papers had gone to press with the story last year, or if Harper's had published this spring, as the source hoped, the Foley scandal would have died down long ago. A stronger case could be made that the media, including Harper’s, dropped the ball and inadvertently protected Foley and covered up evidence of the congressman’s misconduct.

The source who brought me the story didn't see it as a grand piece of electioneering. He viewed it as a story about one individual, Mark Foley, and his inappropriate and disturbing behavior with teenagers. The G.O.P. and its friends in the media are trying to concoct a conspiracy in order to divert attention from the failure of Republican officials to deal properly with Foley.

UPDATE: This article in the Washington Post fleshes out the details even further and corroborates Silverstein's version of events. It appears that ABC's source for the emails was a Republican, but that many months earlier, a Democrat had shopped around the same emails to a number of news outlets. Neither appear to have been a part of any orchestrated effort. The more explicit IMs came directly from pages who were responding to the ABC story. One thing that is abundantly clear: This was never intended to be any "October surprise."