In case you missed it during all the convention coverage, The Daily Caller has a new conspiracy theory: that a DOJ lawsuit against The Gallup Organization is an attempt to intimidate the pollsters. The so-called evidence? Senior Obama adviser David Axelrod has been critical of their polling methods. How baseless is this? So baseless that conservative Ed Morrissey called it “not terribly rational.” Yet Fox News' Shannon Bream allowed her Republican guest not only to validate the theory – without any further evidence – but to throw out inflammatory accusations that the whole thing is the Obama administration’s attempt to squelch the First Amendment. (h/t Aria)
As Media Matters noted in its write up of the Daily Caller piece:
The lawsuit was originally filed by former Gallup employee Michael Lindley, who says he was fired in July 2009 after warning his superiors that he would go to the Justice Department if the company did not stop illegally overbilling the federal government. Lindley filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that Gallup kept two sets of books and illegally inflated the budgets for its work on two federal contracts.
The Caller reported that the Justice Department began investigating the allegations in October 2009, issued subpoenas in February or March of 2010, and was in communication with the company in the fall of 2011. The Gallup emails cited by the Daily Caller were written in April of this year; four months later, DOJ joined Lindley’s lawsuit. As Morrissey notes, “The problem with the ‘retaliation’ theory is that the dispute between Gallup and the DoJ goes back to 2009. (Daily Caller) reports that long after the jump.”
Morrissey also wrote:
Could this be retaliation? It’s possible, I suppose, but it’s not terribly rational, with no upside and lots of downside over a nearly-meaningless issue. People complain about polling models all the time; heck, I do it nearly every week, including Gallup’s occasionally. Polls arguably have some impact on elections, but Axelrod and Obama have far more influence on elections than Gallup or any other pollster, so intimidation and retaliation won’t do anything to improve their prospects that they couldn’t do for themselves.
And even if one thinks it might, why wait so long to retaliate? The worst possible time for retaliation against a pollster is two months before an election, when their results get the maximum amount of attention. It’s the investigation that intimidates, not the lawsuit, which is the other shoe dropping. If one was inclined to think that Gallup might skew results to a favored outcome, wouldn’t it now be in their interest to work against Obama to change the AG and end the lawsuit?
Enter Shannon Bream, the supposedly objective reporter guest hosting yesterday’s supposedly objective America Live program. The fact that Bream presented the “issue” as a debate rather than offering up any real reporting was yet another indication there’s no there there.
Even worse, Bream hosted two like-minded guests who promoted the conspiracy theory without providing any evidence at all in support of it. She failed to mention the whistle blower aspect yet she allowed her guest to suggest that Lindley was some kind of Obama plant in Gallup all along. And she made no comment when guest and “GOP pollster and former executive director of the Texas Republican Party,” Chris Wilson, made this unsupported, extremely inflammatory accusation:
“I think what it shows is how quickly Obama is willing to jump to the Chicago style of politics, throw out some of our fundamental and most treasured freedoms and go after an organization like Gallup, which made a mistake... (Obama is trying to) influence the media by using the Department of Justice and I think it’s a very frightening thing for all of us.
… If you replace the word ‘Gallup’ with ‘New York Times’ or ‘Washington Post,’ and replace ‘poll’ with ‘newspaper’ or ‘news report,’ imagine the outcry from every journalist in America and I think it’s a shame that no one else has jumped on top of this yet. Because it is such an amazing story about how quickly our fundamental freedoms, such as freedom of the press, can be threatened and just because the Obama administration doesn’t like the story that’s coming out.”
Bream had not presented the Daily Caller's accusation as fact, yet she never questioned Wilson's allegation that Obama is threatening "our fundamental freedoms" by going after Gallup.
There was no Democratic spokesperson there. “Attorney” Brian Claypool seems to have been on retainer to the GOP. He said the Obama administration would need Houdini “to get them out of this mess.” He added, “It’s really terrible, it’s unsettling.” As the segment concluded, Claypool gave his summation for the prosecution,
“This is horrible timing for President Obama to do this… Here now, two months before an election, you have what appears to be on the surface an unfair playing field being created in favor of President Obama… It’s just a terrible PR strategy… I think it’s bogus, it’s a bully tactic, they need to withdraw from this lawsuit and let the process play out."
If you look at Real Clear Politics’ polling averages, Gallup falls right in the mainstream of results and shows President Obama with a modest lead over Mitt Romney. If the Obama administration has “worked the refs” at Gallup, why is it that most of the rest of the pollsters arrived at similar results? Or will Fox’s next “just asking” debate be whether or not all the polls have been rigged by the Obama administration?
http://notnowsilly.blogspot.com/
His blog is completely different but just as cutting and hilarious. He’s still posting on Newshounds as Headly Westerfield.
Nice point. For the Foxies, a poll is valid only if it confirms what they’ve been saying. Otherwise, it’s Obama’s fault (H/T Headly, formerly Auntie Em Erican – I miss her so much).
Usually, the two memes you always hear from rightwingnuts in regard to polls are:
- “polls don’t matter” {at least until we find one that makes us look good}, and
- “the only poll that matters is the one on Election Day”
Now, the Fox Comedy Channel is actually DEFENDING the Gallup Organization??
Gracious — all it takes is one poll showing a ten-point bounce for Obama for Fox to be in the tank for a “librul” organization, right?
.
After that, this seems almost like something they can lie about with a straight face.
I heard that Greg Gutfeld pounced on this, as well, but I can’t find where, and my source wouldn’t tell me. I’ll get on this when I go back to work, for now, I’m enjoying my day off.