Poe, Part 10
Topic: WorldNetDaily
It feels like a concluding chapter. Could our long national nightmare be over?

In the latest (and possibly last) chapter of Richard Poe's WorldeNetDaily magnum opus on July 20, he goes beyond lionizing Joseph Farah: He lionizes Free Republic's Jim Robinson, who apparently was born a poor black child. When Poe drops the line, "Robinson grew up dirt poor in Fresno, Calif., in a family of nine children," you know you're in for it.

Poe also repeats a conservative canard about the 2000 presidential election in Florida: "Big Media robbed Bush of many times that number of votes simply by calling Florida for Gore while the polls were still open in the Florida Panhandle. ... By calling Florida for Gore while people were still voting in the Panhandle, Big Media cost Bush a net loss of about 10,000 Florida votes, according to post-election surveys." Let's drag out the bullet points for this one:

-- No network called Florida for Gore until 11 minutes before the polls in the Panhandle closed, as ConWebWatch has noted.
-- The 10,000 figure comes from none other than John Lott, the conservative researcher who can't be trusted about much of anything.
-- WorldNetDaily itself went hunting for Panhandle residents who were discouraged from voting. Their conclusion: "After a week-long dragnet, Republicans have been able to scare up just a handful of Bush supporters willing to testify that they canceled trips to the polls after the networks gave Florida to Gore 11 minutes before polls closed in the Panhandle's Central time zone." Additionally, WND found only one person actually willing to talk about it.

Poe does serve up one interesting tidbit here that's not hopelessly conspiratorial or Clinton-obsessed. He writes that had Al Gore been declared the winner in Florida (or, in Poe-speak, "had Gore succeeded in stealing the election"), the operator of the right-wing Sierra Times website (how right-wing? It has run more articles by Anthony LoBaido than WorldNetDaily has) had coordinated a nationwide trucking strike he was prepared to pull the trigger on. As he quoted the Sierra Times guy: "We were simply not going to accept a Gore presidency."

And conservatives complain about Democrats still bitter about the way the 2000 election ended?

Assuming Poe has indeed finished his opus, we'll be compiling and expanding our Poe blog series into a ConWebWatch article next week. Stay tuned.