Today, the Obama Campaign Washington Post has a story accusing Cindy McCain of trading on her name to get a temporary cell tower installed at the McCain ranch in Arizona for which there was an “expensive public process to meet her needs”. The article then goes on to note all the campaign ties between McCain and both Verizon and AT&T (which also installed a temporary tower there) and quoted a former Democratic House counsel who shadily hinted that something might be amiss.
The only problem with the hit piece story is that its central premise is untrue. The tower that was installed, a temporary tower, was requrested specifically by the Secret Service, not Cindy McCain. Ms. McCain did request that a permanent tower be put in, and offered to give her private land to Verizon in exchange for it, the way that thousands of other landowners have done to have towers put on their property. That request did not make good business sense to Verizon, so they declined.
In other words, Cindy McCain tried to do something that plenty of other people have done, as a private citizen and a landowner. It didn’t work. The Secret Service, with a separate request, got what it needed to perform its job by itself. The Washington Post reporter blew the story, then inflated it into a sinister-appearing case of influence-peddling.
You know, like the Democrats did for well over a decade that caused the mortgage bailout mess. Or, as Ed Morrissey says:
That’s so much more important than looking into Barack Obama’s funding of ACORN, the millions of dollars that he took from contributors named Qwerty Fghjkl;’ from ZX, and the cesspool of corruption in Chicago that Obama never bothered to reform but instead endorsed. I hope the WaPo didn’t have to tear too many people off of the tanning-booth beat in Wasilla to cover this blockbuster.
I’ve yet to see a two-page story about Chris Dodd or Barney Frank and their involvement with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and all the goodies they got to push their own socialist policies. I guess that would mean they’d have to recall a reporter from Sarah Palin’s dumpster to do it, right?
Tags: John McCain, Media Bias, Washington Post
