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Monday, May 9, 2016

Pushing Lies On TV News

I just saw Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic on a panel on Special Report on Fox News.  It was amazing to see this guy just blatantly misstate history.  Goldberg was commenting on Donald Trump's statement that Trump did not need to have a united Republican party to win in November.  According to Goldberg, there's never been any time in history where a candidate won the White House without a united party behind him.  That claim is totally false.

It's not often that there are party splits in presidential elections.  The last time was in 1980 when a group of moderate Republicans refused to back Ronald Reagan and instead supported Illinois Republican congressman John Anderson as their candidate.  Anderson got 6% of the popular vote, but Reagan beat Jimmy Carter in a landslide.

There was also a split in the Democrats in 1948.  Harry Truman faced a Democrat split when Strom Thurmond broke away and formed the so called "Dixiecrats" and vice president Henry Wallace broke the left wing off the Democrats and ran as a "Progressive" party candidate.  Even with two major splits, Truman still won.

It would be nice if people like Jeffrey Goldberg would at least try to be honest.

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