White House Denies Plan to Link GOP to Tea Party
Politico reports:
The White House is pushing back hard against a New York Times report that the president's political team is considering a national ad campaign that would cast the GOP as taken over by tea party extremists. ...
The story is “100 percent inaccurate,” a White House official told Politico.
Times Washington Bureau Chief Dean Baquet counters that the "piece is accurate.”
But White House complaints have had some effect. Although the Times has not posted a correction or otherwise acknowledged making changes to the piece, it dialed back its claims overnight, changing the headline and the lead sentence of the story to de-emphasize the notion that the White House is weighing an anti-GOP ad campaign. ...
The initial headline read, “Obama Advisers Weigh Ad Assault Against the GOP,” and the first sentence reported that “President Obama’s political advisers, looking for ways to help Democrats and alter the course of the midterm elections in the final weeks, are considering a national advertising campaign that would cast the Republican Party as all but taken over by Tea Party extremists, people involved in the discussion said.”
The Times subsequently changed the headline to: “Obama Aides Weigh Bid to Tie the GOP to the Tea Party.”
And the opening sentence now says that the White House is considering a “range of ideas, including national advertisements."
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