After a huge Democratic over-performance in last night’s special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District, Fox & Friends opened their show this morning by suggesting that Conor Lamb’s all-but-official win over Rick Saccone was because Democrat Lamb is really a Republican. Hint: He’s not.
As FiveThirtyEight.com explained, even if somehow Saccone pulls out an unlikely win in the squeaker, Democrats have still won big:
The takeaway for November’s elections will be the same no matter whether Lamb wins by a fraction of a percentage point or Saccone wins by a fraction of a percentage point: Tuesday represented yet another huge Democratic overperformance in a Trump-era special election.
[…]
The big-picture takeaway is this: If Democrats can win districts like Pennsylvania 18, they won’t need to stretch and scrape together a House majority
Predictably, the Fox lickspittles worked to lessen the pain for their Fan-in-Chief, Donald Trump:
First, cohost Steve Doocy credited Donald Trump for Saccone’s narrow loss. Chuckling, Doocy announced that Lamb was up by six until Trump came in and “it’s a dead heat.” Doocy didn’t mention that that poll was something of an outlier. RealClear Politics, for example, had rated the race as a tossup. So did Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Nor did Doocy mention that Trump won the district by 20 points in 2016.
Next, Doocy began the meme that Lamb is really a Republican: “Ultimately, keep in mind this as well … he’s a Democrat running as a Republican.”
Doocy noted that Lamb has said he will not support Nancy Pelosi, that he supports Trump’s tariffs “and he stood with the Republicans, essentially, on issues like abortion.”
What Doocy “forgot” to mention are the important ways in which Lamb is no Republican: He supports a woman’s right to choose (though personally opposed to abortion), he supports ObamaCare and he called the Trump tax bill a “giveaway” to the wealthy.
Nevertheless, cohost Brian Kilmeade jumped on the “Republicans are the real winners” meme by suggesting that Lamb’s win is a loss for Democrats because the rest of the party is too liberal and won't recognize Lamb's winning strategy:
KILMEADE: I’m very curious to see how many pro-life, pro-tax cut, pro-gun, anti-Nancy Pelosi candidates will be nominated for November, because Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have a different image of where the party’s going and they’re looked at as leaders. If they are saying, “Wow, we are on a roll. Yeah, name another candidate like Conor Lamb."
Doocy added, “What’s interesting is, about this particular thing that is too close to call, is they both ran as Republicans.”
UPDATE: As I was finalizing this post, The New York Times declared Lamb the winner.
Watch the Trump friends spin a big Republican loss as a win below, from the March 14, 2018 Fox & Friends, via Raw Story.
The latest spin to seriously get my goat concerns the lady nominated for promotion to Head of CIA. Everybody knows she was an effective implementer of that totally unAmerican programme during which people were plunked into black holes (Thailand, in her case) and subjected to enhanced interrogation aka torture. “She was just following orders” say the GOP.
I believe that that totally lame justification was firmly REJECTED by the USA and its allies during the Nurimburg trials. Hell, even McMasters wrote a book claiming that a soldier could and SHOULD refuse to follow illegal orders. Any attempt by the current administration to preach to other countries on any subject all all, should be received with a loud raspberry.
The “stupid” is very strong in this bunch!
This district won’t exist in November because of the illegal gerrymandering in Pennsylvania. We’ll have to wait and see if the changes will be a benefit to Lamb.
I wonder how much time Fox spent on why this seat was available because of Republican Tim Murphy had encouraged his lover to abort her pregnancy despite holding a strict public anti-abortion stance. In the end, it turned out she wasn’t pregnant. I guess they gave him a mulligan, too.
