Ben Smith/Politico falls for Obama camp spin on New Party

From this post discussing Ben Smith of the Politico:

Have you ever heard of a political party that has no members? Ben Smith has [link], and he believes. Based on a claim by New Party co-founder Joel Rogers that "we didn't really have members," Smith seems to think he's disposed of the issue of Barack Obama's ties to the "dread New Party." In other words, Smith has accepted a transparently absurd statement by an intensely interested Obama supporter responding to a dangerous charge just before an election, while rejecting not only logic, but written evidence contemporaneous with the events in question. Smith has also ignored arguments at the heart of the New Party dispute. In his post on "The Obama Temptation," Mark Levin describes a press that disregards evidence of Obama's past radicalism, mentions it only when it must, and then simply to dismiss those who raise it in the first place. Smith's credulous, incurious, sarcastic, and transparently biased post fits the bill.

UPDATE: Ben Smith tries to defend himself here by trying to suggest that the GOP should attack BHO using "David Freddoso's approach" (BHO is very liberal and linked to the Chicago Machine) vs. the "Jerome Corsi angle, which relies on a mixture of inflation and outright error in casting Obama as a crypto-radical". He then pretends that the latter approach has been repeatedly debunked by the MSM. In fact, what's happening is that the MSM is clearly covering up for BHO. While both approaches should be used, the fact remains that BHO has a long series of radical or far-left friends, and the MSM has tried to cover for him by obscuring those relationships.

UPDATE 2: Stanley Kurtz responds here:

The larger point is that the very existence of so many of these radical political partnerships (and that is what they are, significant political partnerships, not mere "marginal relationships," as Smith would have it) reveals a systematic pattern–a pattern that shows Obama to be a man of the left–so far left that he long had one foot out of (but also one foot in) the conventional Democratic mainstream... Radical or liberal? It’s not an either/or. What’s certain is that Obama is not the post-ideological, post-partisan pragmatist he presents himself as. The press has shamefully colluded in that false presentation... Ben Smith has done us a favor by putting his journalistic bias out in the open. We no longer need to ask: "What were they thinking?" Now we know. Smith’s obvious distaste for the Corner, and other critics of Obama’s radical past, has gotten the best of him...

Politics · Sun, 10/26/2008 - 08:48 · · Importance: 1