About That Weird, Dishonest WSJ Editorial

Former Senator Coleman and his campaign, in their continued efforts to misinform voters and to brainwash supporters into thinking the election was “stolen” have not had many friends that share their point of view. All of the media, including the extreme right-wing outlets such as NewsMax and Powerline have decried Coleman’s chances of doing anything worthy that would legitimately seat him as Seantor.

Strangely, there is one piece of media that has been supportive of Coleman’s talking points that the recount was more or less rigged: a mysterious editorial in the Wall Street Journal. This editorial almost takes the Coleman campaign talking points word for word and makes “news” out of it, even if much of it is false. Nate Silver goes through the entire thing, proving it is indeed bunk. Every other outlet is reporting reality and even editorials, supporting either side, have been generally more honest and realistic.

The Coleman campaign, the Minnesota GOP and others have ignored reality and have pushed this single piece through their ranks and to their supporters in hopes of controlling what their loyal believe — even though it is untruthful and only serves to get people to distrust our system and rebuild loyalty to former Senator Coleman.

Yesterday around noon, Team Coleman sent an email to their supporters titled “Important Read” and contained only one paragraph:

We recommend reading this editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal, which lays out a number of the major concerns made by our campaign regarding several key issues that have arisen in the Senate recount process.  We will be back in touch later today with an update on the state of play here in Minnesota after action by the Minnesota State Canvassing Board is completed this afternoon.

The email contained nothing more. Isn’t it strange, that first sentence? It almost reads as if the WSJ editorial was written by Team Coleman. The follow-up email that evening did not cite any sources and the only links were for their fundraising efforts. That night, Ron Carey sent out an email to ”Republican Leaders” which gives a “update on what to expect for the next phase of the recount.” It cites only one source — the same WSJ editorial.

Everyone interested in ignoring reality and doing whatever they can to re-seat the former Senator started to reference that same WSJ editorial. Media Matters caught a few huge instances: “Limbaugh claims Franken ‘stole’ MN Senate race, cites WSJ editorial to claim “[t]hey’re counting votes twice” and “Scarborough embellished as ‘reporting’ WSJ editorial’s one-sided echo of Coleman’s recount accusation.”

So what happened to cause the WSJ to essentially reprint the Coleman campaign half-truths and lies so Coleman and his supporters could reference them as an independent source?

The breakdown of the editorial by Nate Silver is a must-read.