Stephen Colbert and WH Official to RedState’s Erick Erickson: You Lie!

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by Tommy Christopher | 7:51 am, January 7th, 2010

» 6 comments

On the heels of Erick Erickson‘s Colbert Report appearance, in which he alleged that White House Director of Communications for Health Care Linda Douglass had referred to opponents of reform as “brownshirts,” the conservative fundit did a little bit of ex post facto-checking last night. Apparently, Colbert somehow came to doubt Erickson’s account (you’re welcome, Stephen. Again.) Douglass appeared on the show last night, but was it to nail, or be nailed?

Erickson made the accusation by way of explaining his own use of a Nazi reference, when Colbert confronted him with this tweet:

Linda Douglass really is the Joseph Goebbels of the White House Health Care shop: http://bit.ly/3y276U

The link in that tweet is dead now, but it pointed to this AP story about the much-criticized Price-Waterhouse report on healthcare reform, which did contain a quote from Douglass:

White House health care spokeswoman Linda Douglass concurred. “This is an insurance industry analysis that is designed to reach a conclusion which benefits the industry, and does not represent what the bill does,” she said.

In fact, there’s no record of Douglass ever making any kind of Nazi comparison, unlike Erickson. He must have been counting on Colbert not to have done the research, and never to bring it up again. No such luck.

Colbert brought Douglass on to respond to the charge, and while she wouldn’t call Erickson a liar, she did say this was an example of “crazy, made-up stuff.” You know who else made up crazy stuff? Joseph Goebbels! Did I just nail Linda Douglass?

I have to wonder why Erickson didn’t just cop to using the Goebbels reference as pure hyperbole, or even double-down on it. Is Redstate really going to lose readers because the editor compared an Obama administration official to a Nazi? Far from exacting a cost, the users of this kind of rhetoric are routinely rewarded. Redstate doubtless got a Colbert traffic bump, and other practitioners of Godwin’s law also achieve varying levels of exposure.

barack obama, Colbert Report, Erick Erickson, Ezra Klein, Joseph Goebbels, Linda Douglass, Markos Moulitsas, redstate, Redstate.com, stephen colbert, Tommy Christopher

StewartIII

Nazi comparisons are 97% of the time a bad thing to use, but Linda Douglass has ZERO trustworthiness and ZERO credibility. Remember “flag@whitehouse.gov” and her lying to the country about Obama NOT wanting a single-payer healthcare plan.
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NewsBusters: White House Attacks Drudge for Exposing Obama’s Goal to Eliminate Private Health Insurance
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/08/04/white-house-attacks-drudge-exposing-obamas-goal-eliminate-private-hea
ImNotBlue

I thought it was Pelosi who used the Nazi analogy to describe the protesters.
timzank

It was Pelosi.
http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Harper/1523747111 David Harper

So we are all agreed, Erickson is a liar on national television, besmirching a public official for political gain…
http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Harper/1523747111 David Harper

And Stewart III, Obama’s views on healthcare have changed and during his campaign, he did not advocate for single payer only. He advocated a public option.
http://www.uselessbeauty.com Vidiot

I think we can agree that Nazi rhetoric is overblown and bad. I should point out that Sen. Byrd and MoveOn got lots of flak for comparing Bush Administration policies to the Nazi consolidation of power in the 1930s, but around that same time, plenty of conservatives were comparing liberals to Nazis as well. The list includes the Bush/Cheney campaign, Sen. Rick Santorum, Bob Novak, Rep. Tom Cole, Ralph Peters, Grover Norquist, John Leo, John Hinderaker, and Jonah Goldberg. (And that was what I threw together in about ten minutes of research in 2005 for a blog post.)