Dan Riehl Responds to St. Louis Tea Party Allegations

As I noted previously, members of the St. Louis Tea Party alleged that political consultant Chip Gerdes ghost wrote a blog post for blogger Dan Riehl on Big Government attacking congressional candidate Ed Martin. Here's what they wrote:

As mentioned at the top, Hoft was quoted in the first hit piece against Ed Martin that came out last August on Big Government. That piece, supposedly written by Dan Riehl, sparked a firestorm among Tea Party conservatives in Missouri. Upon questioning, Chip Gerdes, another paid political consultant, stated that he wrote the piece as a “warning shot” to Ed Martin because of comments that Martin made on a Christian AM radio station. If Gerdes is writing hit pieces for Ann Wagner and publishing them under Dan Riehl’s name, what else has he written?

I asked Riehl on Twitter how many of his posts had been written by political consultants and this is how he responded:

I then pointed out that I was merely quoting the tea party:

His response:

So Riehl is on record denying the claims by Burns, Moore, and Evans that political consultant Chip Gerdes wrote a blog post for him. It seems like the burden is now on them to provide evidence to back up their claims; otherwise there's no particular reason to take their word over anyone else's.

Hennessy Calls Riehl An "Establishment Tool." Riehl and Loesch Respond

As I mentioned, Dan Riehl wrote a post on Breitbart's Big Government site slamming Ed Martin's shoddy past and questionable viability as a candidate. Ed Martin loyalist Bill Hennessy, founder of the St. Louis Tea Party, responded to this by calling Riehl an "establishment tool:"

To which Riehl responded with this zinger:

Meanwhile, Dana Loesch went on the attack against Hennessy's claim that Ed Martin was opposed to the "Missouri GOP establishment:"

Breitbart Blogger Trashes Ed Martin In Favor of GOP Establishment Candidate Ann Wagner

On Andrew Breitbart's site Big Government, a new post by Dan Riehl is dissing Email Ed Martin and suggesting that Ann Wagner is a better candidate for the Republicans. Riehl kicks it off by citing this quote from Bungaloo Bill slamming Ed Martin:

He threw his name in the US Senate race. In time, Ed Martin realized he was no match for Sarah Steelman's lackluster campaign. How sad is that! Steelman's last two fundraising quarters has many in the media calling the campaign in real trouble.

So Martin wandered off into another US House race only to have Ann Wagner join the race too. Once again, we see the lack of enthusiasm for Mr. Martin.

Riehl then adds many of his own negative observations about Martin:

In fact, some of what I’ve seen on and from Martin is at least mildly troubling – enough so to raise a red flag, or two....

Ed Martin bailed on a Senate race when the mountain looked too steep to climb. While I have no desire to question his dedication, or commitment, it simply doesn’t speak well for him going into a potentially challenging raise against an experienced, likely well-funded and slick hand like Carnahan...

In addition to those concerns, Martin not only dropped his Senate bid, he did it for a House race in a District in which he doesn’t even live. Unfortunately, that makes him look like someone more interested in calculating his way to the easiest path to Washington, not someone ready for a fight no matter the odds, as he might proclaim.

Visiting his site, I noticed a call by Martin for both he and Wagner to pledge allegiance to Reagan’s so-called 11th Commandment – thou shalt speak no ill of a fellow Republican. Why is that? He doesn’t cite any attack from Wagner, so it comes off as weak, even defensive somehow.

Riehl then goes on to mention Email Ed's ethical problems when he was Chief of Staff for Matt Blunt, and claims that even Gateway Pundit supports Ann Wagner over Martin!

Anyway, Riehl's post reads like a list of talking points from the Wagner campaign, so one has to wonder if Reagan's 11th Commandment hasn't already been breached. But if even Breitbart bloggers including Hoft are supporting Wagner, it looks like Ed Martin's nonstop political campaigning might finally be over in 2012.

Bretibart Blogger Dan Riehl Baselessly Accuses Weiner's Spokesperson of "Lying"

I've already wrote about why I think it's very likely that Representative Anthony Weiner's twitter account was hacked (though, obviously, the facts are still coming out). But here's some further evidence backing up the claim that Breitbart's bloggers are, predictably, doing an incredibly sloppy job covering the story and trying to use it to attack Weiner.

On Big Journalism, Dan Riehl claimed that Anthony Weiner's spokesperson "lied" twice to the New York Post. However, this claim of "lying" was based only on Riehl's preconcieved notions of what happened. Here's the first claim that Riehl says is a "lie:"

Here’s the first [emphasis Riehl's]:

The tech-savvy congressman saw the picture almost immediately. He had been tweeting about a hockey game just a few minutes earlier.

An analysis of Rep. Anthony Weiner’s Twitter timeline has already been done here at Big Government that clearly shows Weiner’s Twitter account had been publicly silent for 3 hrs. and 24 mins. prior to the Tweeting of the inappropriate image. Consequently, there was no Tweet about a hockey game “just a few minutes earlier.” Therefore, that statement simply isn’t true.

Riehl's claim is that it was a "lie" because Weiner didn't delete the picture "immediately" and hadn't been posting about hockey a few minutes before the picture was posted. Here's the problem. Riehl assumes that the claim that he had been watching the hockey game shortly beforehand refers to the time that the photo was posted; however, an equally and perhaps better way of reading the comment is that it meant that he had been tweeting about hockey shortly before "seeing" the tweet, since the previous setence was: "The tech-savvy congressman saw the picture almost immediately." So there's no reason to believe, unless one has already made up their mind, that Weiner hadn't been tweeting about hockey shortley before seeing the tweet. Furthermore, the term "immediately" is purely subjective. True, it wasn't deleted within minutes, but it was deleted within a few hours and wasn't allowed to fester in his Twitter stream for days.

The second claim Riehl said was a "lie:"

Rep. Weiner’s spokesman then falsely claims that after removing the image in question, Weiner joked about the incident a mere 15 minutes later. Again, from the Post:

Weiner pulled the shot himself, but not before it had been retweeted and screen-grabbed by several followers. Weiner, a voracious user of Twitter, wrote a humorous response about 15 minutes later.

False.

In fact, on his Twitter account, Weiner appeared to dissemble and bumble about for over an hour before firing off the tweet about his Facebook account being hacked. Here’s a recreation of the timeline, starting with the Tweet Weiner claims was sent by an alleged hacker and ending with the “FB Hacked” tweet.

Again, the claim that it was a "lie" was based on the idea that the reference point was when the photo was posted. Again, an equally plausible reference point was the time that Weiner first saw the photo. In that case, Riehl has no evidence to justify his claim that it was a "lie" that Weiner joked about the tweet 15 minutes after seeing it.

The sloppy schmournalists at Breitbart's sites are always happy to accuse people of "lying" without bothering to look for alternative explanations. If they were actually committed to finding the actual facts, they would not be so sloppy.

Update: Weiner was lying. I stand corrected.