Republicans may have managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory
with a Web ad that altered a Supreme Court audio recording to make the
Obama administration's defense of the health law appear more stumbling
than it actually was.
The ad seeks to build off the momentum Republicans have felt since the law's individual mandate came under rough questioning on Tuesday. By doctoring Solicitor General Donald Verrilli's presentation to the court -- adding pauses and making it look like he failed do complete his thought -- the Republican National Committee, however, has drawn attention to the ad's legitimacy instead of its content.
"This is the single most classless and misleading thing I've ever seen related to the Court," attorney Tom Goldstein
wrote on his SCOTUS blog. "It is as if the RNC decided to take an incredibly serious and successful argument that has the chance to produce a pathbreaking legal victory for a conservative interpretation of the Constitution, drag it through the mud, and vomit on it."
The Democratic National Committee actively disseminated Goldstein's blog post and the original Bloomberg article that first reported the changes to the court audio.
