Washington Post reporter Aaron Blake told CNN on Tuesday that candidate George W. Bush "just didn't pay a high enough price" in the 2000 election for his DUI arrest that occurred more than 20 years prior.
Blake was talking about famous "October surprises," or unforseen events occurring in the month before the election that could be game-changing. The Bush DUI revelation was a hit job planted by a Democratic source that mushroomed into a big story because of the liberal media. [Video below the break. Audio here.]
"But how was he [Bush] able to overcome that story so close to the election?" anchor Brooke Baldwin asked on Tuesday afternoon. Blake answered that " he didn't really overcome it. He just didn't pay a high enough price."
Regardless of whether he meant that Bush didn't suffer enough for the DUI or the fallout wasn't "high enough" to cost him the election, Blake's words definitely made it seem that Bush had to suffer for his crime from decades earlier, and didn't suffer enough in his opinion.
Blake has been hostile to conservatives on multiple occasions during this election cycle, most notably when he had the gall to ask Twitter followers for any dirt on Newt Gingrich. The MRC's Brent Bozell excoriated Blake's tactics as part of a "character assassination."
A transcript of the segment, which aired on October 9 on CNN Newsroom at 3:39 p.m. EDT, is as follows:
BROOKE BALDWIN: And now we jump all the way, October, 2000, news broke George W. Bush had been arrested for drunk driving. Granted, that had happened way back in the '70's. But how was he able to overcome that story so close to the election?
AARON BLAKE, columnist, "The Fix": Well, you know, he didn't really overcome it. He just didn't pay a high enough price. Everybody will recall, of course, that he actually lost the popular vote in that race, even though he won the electoral vote. Whereas he was up by about five points before that story broke, so I think it's pretty clear that that cost him some votes, but it didn't cost him quite enough to actually cost him the election.
