Bob Beckel: “Crackers And Right Wingers” Behind “Whitey” Smear!

Boy, the guy has a helluva nerve saying that. I wasn’t even going to touch the story, until I heard him talking about it on Fox News!:

Here he is today denouncing the spreading of the “Whitey smear” he helped perpetuate:

The cracker comment can be seen at LGF. I can’t get the video to embed, here.

Truth be told, most conservative bloggers presented the story as a rumor. I know I did, and I went back and forth for days, before I finally dismissed it because there were just too many inconsistencies in the story. I haven’t dismissed it out of hand, though. Frankly, I still think there’s a chance that it could be true, which to me, is one of the most devastating aspects of the rumor…that so many reasonable people actually believe Michelle Obama is capable of “railing against whitey”. But the fact of the matter is…conservative bloggers did not start the rumor!

Bob Beckel is certainly savvy enough to know that the “Whitey” rumor originated from the Pro-Hillary Democrat blogs, Texas Darlin, and No Quarter (earliest reportage May 15 that I could find) and it has been aggressively perpetuated by another pro-Hillary blog, Hillbuzz.

All of the big right wing bloggers have either presented it as an interesting rumor, or dismissed it entirely.

Hot Air has a list of the news organizations who have gotten this wrong, (by blaming conservative bloggers for the rumor) so far:

(1) Time magazine, (2) the New York Times, (3) the AP, (4) the Guardian, and now ABC. Not a single one has so much as mentioned Larry Johnson.

I agree with Ace. These aren’t all examples of media cluelessness, but deliberate lies.

UPDATE (June 16)::

This is the lead story at Michelle Malkin, this morning. As you can imagine…she’s not amused. She’s one of the leading righty bloggers who dismissed the story from the get-go.

UPDATE II:

Here is the part of the June 15 video with the Cracker comment:

I love how he claims he had tried to dispel the rumors in his earlier appearance. Bullcrap. He did no such thing. He’s the one who brought it up. Nobody even asked him about it. It just came out of thin air…”There is one other thing….”, and there was no attempt to dispel the rumor. In fact he stated that it was coming from multiple sources, and that it was worrying him.

Democrats for McCain

Drip drip drip…. a few drops in the bucket could become a deluge:

Wisconsin Delegate’s Reversal Stuns Party:

As an avid supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries, Debra Bartoshevich is not alone in her frustration over Clinton’s defeat.

She’s not alone in refusing to support Barack Obama.

And she’s not entirely alone in saying she’ll vote this fall for Republican John McCain instead.

But what makes her unusual is that she holds these views as an elected delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Denver this summer.

Marc Ambinder reported on another disgruntled Hillary supporter only a few days ago:

The co-chair of Iowa Students for Hillary is endorsing John McCain for reasons you can read about here. On the one hand, these stories are flies in the forest — individual folks making their own choices. But the Clinton community is tight-knit. When folks go off the reservation, other folks follow.

And another one, here.

Then there was of course the Governor of Iowa, Ted Strickland who has unequivocally ruled out being Barry’s running mate.

And Tennessee superdelegates State Rep. Lincoln Davis, U.S. Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Murfreesboro) and former Vice President Al Gore have also not endorsed Obama.

Davis is “unsure” about the Democrat nominee for President. And his colleague in the TN legislature, Ted Hobbs famously quipped:

“Maybe [it’s] the same reason I don’t want to — I don’t exactly approve of a lot of the things he stands for and I’m not sure we know enough about him,” Hobbs said when asked why he thought Davis wasn’t endorsing Obama. “He’s got some bad connections, and he may be terrorist connected for all I can tell. It sounds kind of like he may be.”

Democrats at Pro-Hillary No Quarter and Hillbuzz are openly hostile to Obama, and are not shy about voicing their support of McCain…

I guess I should include Joementum, too.

Again, just a drop in the bucket, now, but this dislike of Obama, and support for McCain could become Niagra Falls, as people get to know Obama better.

The Republican Party is shrewdly, (for a change) taking advantage of this opportunity:

In a telephone interview with WorldNetDaily, a McCain spokesman said his campaign is sponsoring “big re-registration drives” currently underway “in key states like California” to re-register Democrats and independents who would then vote for McCain.

“We’re doing a re-registration drive” for Democrats “to re-register as Republicans so their votes do count when they vote for John McCain,” the spokesman said. “That’s kind of one of our big issues.

“I can’t really tell you we do it all the time, but we do as much as we can so that we can get the message out in states where your vote does not count,” the spokesman said. The effort is specifically “directed at Democrats and independents who are registered to vote in the primaries in their state.”

Danielle Clermont, spokesman for the South Carolina Democratic Party confirmed to WorldNetDaily that McCain campaign operatives were actively soliciting Democratic and independent voters for the state’s upcoming GOP primary this weekend.

Anyway, it’s something to keep an eye on in the upcoming months.