Patricia Murphy at the Daily Beast launched this assault on Thursday: “Ted Cruz’s Fake Fight Against Obamacare Is Making Millions.” The subhead was "Ted Cruz's war against Obamacare is a racket to raise his profile and millions of dollars." Murphy saw only greed in his 21-hour speech: “Cruz was leading a fake fight over a fake vote that nearly all in Washington agree would never actually defund Obamacare the way Cruz said it would.”
This is not exactly the way Tina Brown and her liberal minions treated Barack Obama when he was raking in many millions of dollars with two different memoirs that were filled with fraudulent personal history. Out came the anonymous sources to trash Senator Ted:
Almost single-handedly, the freshman Tea Party apostle has upended the clubby U.S. Senate, roiled the tradition-bound GOP, and revolutionized the business of power in the nation’s capital, all thanks to the health-care bill that Cruz, former senator Jim DeMint, and a small army of conservative operatives have essentially made a living out of hating.
"These guys aren't stupid. They can read the votes,” says a veteran Republican operative. “That's why Republicans are so infuriated. Folks know exactly why they're doing this. They are using this issue and misleading conservatives in order to expand their own influence and raise money for themselves."
Patricia Murphy is making a habit of this anonymous-sources attack. A month ago, Murphy wrote an article on Ted Cruz which asked the loaded question: “Can a master debater who wore a paisley bathrobe to creepily stroll by the women’s wing of the dorm be the next president?” The primary named source is Craig Mazin, a roommate of Cruz’s at Princeton in their freshman year. Then came the anonymously-sourced slams:
In addition to Mazin and Leitch, several fellow classmates who asked that their names not be used described the young Cruz with words like “abrasive,” "intense," “strident,” “crank,” and “arrogant." Four independently offered the word “creepy,” with some pointing to Cruz’s habit of donning a paisley bathrobe and walking to the opposite end of their dorm’s hallway where the female students lived.
“I would end up fielding the [girls’] complaints: 'Could you please keep your roommate out of our hallway?'" Mazin says....
While Cruz’s friends from the debate team foresaw a successful career in politics for Cruz, many of the Princeton alums offered that they were deeply troubled by the possibility of Cruz running for president, a notion that one, who did not want to be quoted speaking against a former classmate who is now a senator, called notion “horrifying.”
Craig Mazin said he knew some people might be afraid to speak in the press about a senator, but added of Cruz, “We should be afraid that someone like that has power.”
And the idea that his freshman roommate could someday be the leader of the free world? “I would rather have anybody else be the president of the United States. Anyone,” Mazin said. “I would rather pick somebody from the phone book."
Using this kind of journalistic smear tactic, I don't actually need to identify my sources (or interview any) to inform you that associates of Patricia Murphy who have asked their names note be used described her as "chirpy," "annoying," "strident," and since we're writing about liberal feminists, a "ball-buster." How would she like those "anonymous" apples baked for her?
The reader usually does not know that Patricia Murphy spent ten years working for three Democrat senators, mostly Georgia's Max Cleland, before becoming a communications director for PBS in 2003.
