Earlier this morning, Breitbart foe and wearer of crazypants Charles Johnson published a piece on his blog suggesting that Breitbart.com employees have been in collusion with the Romney campaign.
Readers on this site are already aware of the leaked document that showed a super-rich right-winger planning a $10 million “scary black President” smear campaign. Of course, once the plan and the billionaire backer were exposed to the sunlight, they quickly pivoted to say that they never really planned on running the ads.
Romney, after initially hemming and hawing and saying he hadn’t “read the papers yet,” eventually got around to “condemning” the attack strategy, saying, “So in regards to that PAC, I repudiate what they’re thinking about.”
But some in the right-wing blogosphere think that Romney actually is offering “wink wink nudge nudge” support for the smear campaigns, and is simply employing the strategy of “good cop, bad cop” alongside his surrogates.
Johnson cited tweets by Loesch in which she analyzed Romney’s campaign in order to “prove” his point that Romney and Breitbart.com are in cahoots. He even went so far as to suggest that Breitbart.com employees were present at a top-secret meeting with Romney’s campaign.
Now, any journalist worth his or her salt should know better than to take Johnson seriously.
https://twitter.com/#!/DLoesch/status/203554245537046531
https://twitter.com/#!/DLoesch/status/203554568733331456
https://twitter.com/#!/DLoesch/status/203557903574114304
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https://twitter.com/#!/DLoesch/status/203558063205134336
https://twitter.com/#!/DLoesch/status/203560807714390016
And, right on cue, Mediaite‘s Tommy Christopher used Johnson’s piece as a springboard for his own story, in which he doubled down on the “secret meeting” theory.
https://twitter.com/#!/DLoesch/status/203598989583581184
From Christopher’s piece:
Loesch, for her part, says her tweets were not the result of some inside information …
…
Since the blogger outreach meeting was off the record, Loesch wouldn’t be able to reveal what was told to her by colleagues who were at the meeting even if she wanted to, but “All of my Tweets are based purely on my own conjecture unless specified” seems to pretty well cover it.
I’m not sure that it makes much of a difference, since what Loesch is saying rings just as true whether she got it from the Romney meeting or not. Loesch has been getting very defensive on Twitter (pretending that a meeting everyone knows about didn’t happen is a lousy way to tamp down suspicion) about Johnson’s post, but what they’re each saying isn’t all that incompatible.
Johnson is really only saying that Romney failed to make clear to the meeting’s attendees that these kinds of attacks by others were unacceptable. If he had, Johnson reasons, surely one of Loesch’s colleagues in attendance would have corrected her tweets. It’s also not a stretch to believe that Loesch’s analysis might be colored by conversations with her colleagues who were at that meeting.
Loesch wasn’t having any of it, and she tore into Christopher for his conspiratorial and fact-starved article:
https://twitter.com/#!/DLoesch/status/203599442669080576
https://twitter.com/#!/DLoesch/status/203599523812089858
In his story, Christopher also condescended to Loesch, suggesting that her Twitter analysis of Romney’s campaign was so “astute,” she couldn’t possibly have the ability to make those observations on her own.
https://twitter.com/#!/DLoesch/status/203601490991001600
Clever, Tommy. Too bad you picked the wrong woman to talk down to.
https://twitter.com/#!/DLoesch/status/203603082867781632
https://twitter.com/#!/DLoesch/status/203603270101512193
https://twitter.com/#!/tommyxtopher/status/203601745341980673
https://twitter.com/#!/DLoesch/status/203601915328737280
https://twitter.com/#!/tommyxtopher/status/203601956923645953
https://twitter.com/#!/DLoesch/status/203602054890004480
https://twitter.com/#!/DLoesch/status/203602124083437568
https://twitter.com/#!/tommyxtopher/status/203603648507428864
https://twitter.com/#!/tommyxtopher/status/203603842401701889
Nothing patronizing about that.
https://twitter.com/#!/DLoesch/status/203602225006788608
https://twitter.com/#!/DLoesch/status/203602513075765248
https://twitter.com/#!/DLoesch/status/203609161823563776
https://twitter.com/#!/tommyxtopher/status/203604383383027712
https://twitter.com/#!/tommyxtopher/status/203605167780794368
Here’s the clause:
Clarification: Dana Loesch is under the impression that this post was meant to imply that she was at the meeting herself, despite clear language to the contrary. To be clear, any references to Loesch gaining information from this meeting is in reference to her colleagues who were there. Dana Loesch was, in fact, not at that meeting, and I never suggested she was.
https://twitter.com/#!/DLoesch/status/203610234269335552
https://twitter.com/#!/DLoesch/status/203610321250820097
https://twitter.com/#!/DLoesch/status/203621385082372096
https://twitter.com/#!/DLoesch/status/203626146435301377
During the course of all this, conservatives leapt to Loesch’s defense, calling out Christopher for his disingenuousness and really letting him have it.
https://twitter.com/#!/stephenkruiser/status/203617059060453376
https://twitter.com/#!/Jakeninety8/status/203613195074674688
https://twitter.com/#!/jdonels/status/203610311293538304
https://twitter.com/#!/ShadowPatriot/status/203607948126199809
https://twitter.com/#!/CFLancop/status/203627440352935936
https://twitter.com/#!/nathanwurtzel/status/203607015828885504
https://twitter.com/#!/K_P_Brown/status/203606899470512128
https://twitter.com/#!/mkhammer/status/203607330414268416
https://twitter.com/#!/mkhammer/status/203607757381828608
https://twitter.com/#!/mkhammer/status/203608116712050688
Christopher’s silly implication that Loesch was able to be in two places simultaneously even launched a hashtag game: #TeleportingDana.
https://twitter.com/#!/ChrisLoesch/status/203608952326471680
https://twitter.com/#!/BrettStevens2/status/203616048283525120
https://twitter.com/#!/MrTimMcCormack/status/203616408830087168
https://twitter.com/#!/OffACough/status/203617635303297024
Dana Loesch, all the points; Tommy Christopher, nothing but a goose egg and ego bruises.
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