Categories: Capital Read, Potter Gold

This isn't a Biden, it's a Rove

by Andrew Potter on Tuesday, September 30, 2008 10:27am - 3 Comments

The issue is not whether Harper (or one of his speechwriters) cribbed from a speech by John Howard. It’s whether both Howard and Harper got their talking points from the same place, i.e. the White House.

It wouldn’t be the last time that happened.

UPDATE: The Libs really have their talking points wrong on this. It isn’t a plagiarism scandal. It’s a sock-puppet scandal.

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  • http://www.kelvin-chan.net/ Kelvin

    Two similar lines in two statements and wholesale ripping off of speeches are NOT the same thing.

    August 6 was the day before the massive Georgian government’s offensive into South Ossetia. It sets a clear standard for what Canada and the US were expecting from both sides. Anything murkier and the Russians and Georgians would’ve taken considerable interpretive liberties. e.g.: “Before the conflict” = “Before Georgia attacked”? OR “Before Russia invaded”? OR “Before South Ossetia declared independence”?

    Was there coordination? Probably. Am I glad that two NATO members bothered to match talking points before saying something, unlike the cacophony of contradictions that EU members were sending? Yes.

    This, on the other hand, is about more than half the speech being identical to another speech. Unless you’re suggesting that Bush speechwriters sent the SAME SPEECH to two different people and told them to read it, in which case our perceptions of reality might be too far apart for discussion.

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