Cowardly

A congressman goes on right wing radio, and is asked about President Obama's documentation. After demurring a few times, he says, "Let’s go back and revisit some of these things because Americans have questions about not only the IRS scandal but also about the president’s validity."

Yes, he uses weasel words. He doesn't say he thinks there are any real questions about the President's validity, but an honest person would inform his listeners, not coddle them.

This is a nice example of cowardly "stupid on purpose." He clearly knows better, and he tried to avoid saying anything, but when pressed, he gave a weasel answer supporting his host's stupidity. He validated the paranoid view, because there was no reward in contradicting it with truth, and every advantage to supporting lies. There was simply no validity

The IRS Commissioner at the White House

One of the primary reasons that "stupid on purpose" exists is that the incentive structure has gotten so bad in the right wing media. All news media have a tension between running a "good story" and making sure it is fact-checked, but the right wing media, when it finds a story that reflects badly on liberals or liberal policies, simply gives in to its id.

Case in point: The IRS Commissioner story. Once they got the 150 number, it was too great a story to actually fact check. The goal is never to get facts, the goal is to get Democrats.

And so the Daily Caller finds itself Stupid on Purpose. The fact checking was done by Garance Franke-Ruta at the Atlantic.

Josh Marshall has an amusing explanation of the pattern, in Why GOP Scandal Mongers Can't Have Nice Things.