Stephanie Cutter & The NY Times: One Lies And The Other Swears to It!

When I was a kid, if I would "back up" a tall tale told by a friend or sibling my mother, of blessed memory, would always say the same thing. "Sure, one lies and the other swears to it!"  If she was around today she might say that about Obama campaign spokesman, Stephanie Cutter and the official newspaper of the campaign the NY Times. As if acting in tandem (and that may very well be the case) they both declared the congressional hearings regarding the terrorist attack against our Mission in Benghazi  Libya to be nothing but politics.

This was a terrorist attack on our soil (yes the Mission is American Property) which killed four Americans and the first assassination of an American ambassador in over three decades. This administration that took over a month to admit it that it was not caused by an Anti-Muslim video (and only did so the day before the hearings) and Obama's campaign really has to wonder why Congress is holding hearings? Perhaps because that's their Job.

First  to Ms Cutter who said this during a CNN interview today:

STEPHANIE CUTTER: In terms of the politicization of this — you know, we are here at a debate, and I hope we get to talk about the debate — but the entire reason this has become the political topic it is, is because of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. It’s a big part of their stump speech. And it’s reckless and irresponsible what they’re doing.

What Cutter doesn't get is the liberal media feels they've been lied to and they don't like that. Well except for the NY Times.  They have taken a position which agrees with Ms Cutters cockamamie claim:

New York Times Managing Editor Dean Baquet said today he doesn't see "anything significantly new" in yesterday's congressional hearings on Libya, while both he and the paper's Executive Editor Jill Abramson suggested the hearings were politicized and therefore not worthy of front-page coverage.

Baquet and Abramson's remarks come in response to criticism from the paper's own public editor, Margaret Sullivan, who objected to the editors' decision not to run its story about the hearings on today's front page. Both The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal gave yesterday's hearings prominent play on their front pages, above the fold. The Times placed its story on page A3.

Baquet, who oversees the paper's afternoon editorial meeting, told Sullivan he "didn’t think there was anything significantly new in it."

“It’s three weeks before the election and it’s a politicized thing, but if they had made significant news, we would have put it on the front," he said. 

 The rest of the media was not as supportive of the position outlined by Ms Cutter.  CBS reporter Jan Crawford said Romney rarely talks about Benghazi

A tweet from Adam Serwer, writer for the eft-wing magazine Mother Jones suggested a different, more reasonable theory.

Noah Rothman of  Mediaite described it perfectly:

In effect, Cutter said that this attack, one of the most comprehensive and successful Al Qaeda attacks on American assets since September 11, 20001 in which an American ambassador overseas was killed for the first time since the Carter administration, was only on the media’s radar because it is an election year. Stephanie Cutter has just provided Mitt Romney a stronger argument against President Barack Obama’s handling of foreign affairs he could have hoped for. In a single bound, Cutter revealed the administration’s thinking about how to respond to this deadly attack – it is not about American security, it is about politics. Fair or not, that is how Romney will frame Cutter’s glib remark. 

Tomorrow morning this may be a bigger story than the debate.  It doesn't seem as though the media is buying the Obama Campaign's Jedi "These aren't the droids you're looking for" mind trick. At least this time.