I wrote a post last week calling out the RMoney/Granny Killer team for promoting six bogus studies that they claim back up their faulty economic plans. I made a point to say that President Obama should use this in Tuesday's debate: Obama Should Slam Romney On His 'Six Studies' Falsehood Over Tax Plan
Well, it didn't take long for someone to take my advice, but it turns to be a person you might not think would use it so soon: Chris Wallace berated Ed Gillespie on Fox News Sunday about Romney's invisible specifics on his policies, and then cited the same points I raised soon after. Ed tried to use the old partisan/non-partisan con, but Wallace wouldn't have it.
WALLACE: But you’re not explaining – because there are a lot of question from independent people – how do you pay for it? And you refuse say how you’re going to pay for it.
GILLESPIE: What we have said is that we are going to pay for it with these, by limiting deductions and loopholes – and, by the way, making sure for the middle class, that protecting the home mortgage deduction and other important deductions for them, but at the high end you would eliminate deductions and, you know, a lot of special interest loopholes that would allow you to bring down the rate 20%. Six different studies have said this is entirely doable.
WALLACE: Those are questionable, some of them are blogs, some of them are from the AEI, which is hardly an independent group.
GILLESPIE: These are very credible sources…
WALLACE: One of them is from a guy who is – from a blog from a guy who was a top adviser to George W. Bush. These are hardly nonpartisan studies.
GILLESPIE: Well, Chris, I think if you look at Harvard and AEI and other studies, they are very credible sources for economic analysis.
WALLACE: You wouldn’t say that AEI is a conservative think tank?
GILLESPIE: I would say it is a right-leaning think tank. That doesn’t make it not credible.
WALLACE: Chris: It doesn’t make it nonpartisan.
GILLESPIE: It does make it nonpartisan. It’s not a partisan organization, I can tell you, there have been many instances where there have been things that AEI has come out with and said, that I didn’t find to be necessarily helpful to the Republican Party.
Gillespie was flummoxed over these questions and rightly so, because Wallace is the first pundit on a mainstream-media show to openly criticize their bulls**t economic numbers, which are justified by more bulls**t.
Bill O'Reilly is mad that RMoney hasn't done his show yet and is hopeful he'll show up soon, although if a Democrat refused to go on The Factor for the entire campaign season, it would be his headline every day. Apparently Wallace is perturbed also.
Politicus USA believes that FOX doesn't trust Mittens and RMoney doesn't trust Ailes, but is more surprised than I am that Wallace took a strong stand on this.
It was also a bit surreal to see Chris Wallace do what most of the supposedly “neutral” mainstream media won’t do, by calling out Romney’s 6 studies statistic as completely bogus.
Let's hope more Villagers start demanding some specifics from Romney and denounce these studies instead of harping on the theatrical side of this election.
(h/t Heather for the video)
