Seems like the chair of the Democratic National Committee has just done that. Daniel Halper reports:
Philip Klein reported that DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz said this: “We know, and I’ve heard no less than Ambassador Michael Oren say this, that what the Republicans are doing is dangerous for Israel.”
Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to America, released a statement saying that Wasserman Schultz was wrong. “I categorically deny that I ever characterized Republican policies as harmful to Israel. Bipartisan support is a paramount national interest for Israel, and we have great friends on both sides of the aisle,” . . .
When asked about this, Wasserman Schultz said she didn’t say what she said. At the link, Halper has video of the denial and audio of the statement.
This is what you call lying. Where are the “fact-checkers” on this one? If the chair of the Republican National Committee had denied saying what he had said, this would dominate the news.
This should make major news, not just for the dishonesty, but for the fact that the leader of a political party has misrepresented, for political purposes, what the ambassador of an allied nation has said.
UPDATE: Reminding us that the Democratic Party’s platform “excises almost all of the pro-Israel language from the party platform of 2008″, Rob at Joshuapundit contends that the “very fact that the Obama Campaign would resort to this outright deception (I guarantee you Debbie Wasserman Schultz didn’t think of this herself) is proof that the Jewish vote in America is very much up for grabs.“
Blabbermouth Schultz was playing the yenta as she did her kvetching shtick.
“Is this truth I’m delivering up, or is it just plain kvetching? Or is kvetching for people like me a form of truth?” (Philip Roth: Portnoy’s Complaint.)
Whatever was driving her, she was not kvetching to the old women in her home district condos. She was playing loose with the words of the diplomatic envoy between Israel and the United States and it was solely for political party gain.
This is not a light and transitory infraction. She has more than a lot of ‘splainin’ to do. The Jewish vote is by and large the property of the Democrat party. But playing fast and loose with the Israel card is lousy politics in an election year.
Maybe she can get Chuck Schumer to come defend her. And maybe she can swim around the world in 30 minutes.