Imagine If A Democrat Had Done This, Part 9,487

Greg Sargent, The Horse's Mouth: Here's a question: When are the cable nets and the Capitol Hill press and the pundits going to dig into the role that GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell played in pushing the smear of the Frost family?

It needs to be said that reporters like Time's Karen Tumulty and The New York Times's David Herszenhorn did a decent job knocking down the original winger smear of the Frosts. But since then, the story's moved forward considerably, and it's gotten really good. And neither these media worthies nor any others have followed suit.

As I noted below, the Courier-Journal of Kentucky revealed yesterday that McConnell's chief press aide had tried to get reporters to follow the "reporting" done on this by Michelle Malkin and company before realizing the story was bogus and calling the reporters off.

And today there's still more on McConnell's role. As both Atrios and John Aravosis note, the tireless Courier-Journal has revisited its interview with the McConnell aide and weighed in with another story on this pretty much proving that McConnell lied about his own role:

WASHINGTON -- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell knew last week -- at a time when he was denying it -- that his staff had sent e-mails encouraging reporters
to look into the background of a 12-year-old boy used by Democrats to support expansion of a health-care program.

In an interview Friday with WHAS-TV reporter Mark Hebert, the Kentucky Republican said his staff had not been involved in trying to push reporters to look into the financial situation of the boy's family.

But McConnell's communications director, Don Stewart, said in an interview Monday with The Courier-Journal that he had told McConnell about the Oct. 8 e-mails sometime around Thursday, the day before the interview with Hebert.

It's key to keep in mind that this isn't just some GOP City Councilman from Nowheresville. It's the GOP leader in the Senate. His office tried to get reporters to join Michelle Malkin and the rest of the wingnut hounds to join in the chase of a 12-year-old boy who'd been severely injured. McConnell knew about this, and then lied about knowing about it.

I know, the "let's imagine if a Dem had done this" game is a cliche. But let's play it anyway. Imagine if a top communications staffer for Harry Reid tried to get mainstream reporters to follow the lead of lefty bloggers who were digging into the background of, and harassing, a young boy who had appeared in a GOP ad for some policy initiative or another -- and then imagine if Reid were caught lying about it.

Lefty bloggers wouldn't have taken this route, of course, but if this had happened and Reid had done this, I think the cable networks would be all over it. CNN's internet reporter would do a segment on it, Wolf Blitzer would grunt with disapproval, Chris Matthews would drench the Hardball camera with spittle flecks, Richard Cohen would question Reid's character, David Broder would shake his head and mutter darkly about "incivility" and Reid's incompetence, Howie Kurtz would write a story about the coverage of the story, and the rest would be history. That Reid staffer would end up resigning.

Dems are now out there attacking McConnell. Yet we're hearing nothing about this key twist in the story. At the very least you'd think this would be fodder for the cable nets. Bizarre.