Clever Dennis Roddy, Very Clever

An astute reader posted a comment today that I had to (just had to) expand into a full fledged blog posting of it's own.

I'm ususally a big fan of Dennis Roddy. He's usually spot on - factwise.

Not today - not really. Take a look at this article. Specifically, this passage:

A pro-life Casey Democrat talks rapturously of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose husband Bill kept the city's standard-bearer, Gov. Robert Casey Sr., off the platform at two conventions.

And this one:

Scranton has for 35 years been the epicenter of Pennsylvania's anti-abortion movement. Its most famous hometown boy was Gov. Robert P. Casey Sr., an ardent liberal who found himself on the outside of his own party because of his ardent pro-life stand. It was the Clinton forces in 1992, and again in 1996, who denied Mr. Casey the right to speak at his own party's national convention where he wanted to deliver a pro-life speech.

And this:

"I'm a Catholic and I'm still a Roman Catholic," Mrs. Vancosky said. "I'm older and I have older views. And I was for Clinton, even though he didn't let Casey have the podium. I am definitely a Hillary girl."

Take a look at he says (and more importantly, what he doesn't say). Our astute reader pointed out that Roddy was repeating the "tired old lie" that Casey, Sr was denied a spot at the Democratic Convention because of his pro-life views.

Our astute reader, though, is wrong. Take a look again, very closely, at what Roddy wrote. He never gives a reason for Casey being denied a spot at either convention does he?

The story about the '92 convention has been around for a long long time. I am hoping that Roddy isn't looking to his readers will "fill in the blanks" of what he didn't write with enough bits and pieces of the false story to continue it's lifespan. That way he can say still he never said what everyone thinks he said.

We even wrote about this "story" almost a year ago. We quoted:

According to those who actually doled out the 1992 convention speaking slots, Casey was denied a turn for one simple reason: his refusal to endorse the Clinton-Gore ticket. "It's just not factual!" stammers James Carville, apoplectic over Casey's claims. "You'd have to be idiotic to give a speaking role to a person who hadn't even endorsed you."

There's more. Digby dug up the original New Republic article (it's behind a subscription wall) and typed out this:

The man best able to explain the decision was the late Ron Brown. He addressed the topic during a roundtable discussion of Clinton campaign veterans (published as Campaign for President: The Managers Look at '92). He explained:

We decided the convention would be totally geared towards the general election campaign, towards promoting our nominee and that everybody who had the microphone would have endorsed our nominee. That was a rule, everybody understood it, from Jesse Jackson to Jerry Brown.... The press reported incorrectly that Casey was denied access to the microphone because he was not pro-choice. He was denied access to the microphone because he had not endorsed Bill Clinton. I believe that Governor Casey knew that. I had made it clear to everybody. And yet it still got played as if it had to do with some ideological split. It had nothing to do with that.

And then there's this:

Besides, Casey repeatedly bashed Clinton during the primaries, calling Clinton's success "very tragic." Less than three months before the '92 convention, he urged, "Convention rules provide for the selection of an alternative candidate. Let's pick a winner." Why would Clinton invite him to speak?

Sorry Dennis, your tellytubby impression was sublime, but you got this one wrong.