There’s something redundant about the phrase, "actual reality." I know that. But we have to make distinctions, when dealing our friends at SCRG, between the actual sort and their sort.

If I agreed with what these folks are advocating, I’d be embarrassed they’re on my side. I’ve gotten the impression that Karen Floyd is. But she’s sort of stuck; she’s their candidate.

Anyway, here is a partial breakdown of the problems that made the latest SCRG unpublishable by anyone except SCRG.

I should probably preface this by noting that on the pages of The State, we let (actually, we encourage it and facilitate it) folks who disagree with us say pretty much anything they want and call us any names they want — as long as they’re suitable for a family newspaper. You can call us left-wing; you can call us right-wing (they’re about equally popular, it seems); you can call us late for supper. You can say our mothers dress us funny.

What we won’t let you do is confuse readers by saying something that is objectively, obviously untrue. And that includes saying we said things we didn’t say. I mean, what’s the point of our taking the trouble to write something if we’re going to use our own space to let people say we said something else? Kind of a pointless exercise. Argue with what we say all you like, but no inventing false statements. (I suspect people do this because they think they have an answer for the phony statement, but they know they are incapable of contending with what we actually said. Whatever.)

Anyway, here’s the point-by-point:

• Goebbels? Joseph Goebbels? Isn’t this device in some sort of Over-The-Top Name-Calling Rhetoric Hall of Fame?
• Actually, Cindi likes school choice. You know, send your kids to any public school you want, whether you’re zoned for it or not; whether you even live in the district or not. And send them to any private school you want, but then you pay for it yourself instead of asking other taxpayers to do it for you. On this point she’s a lot easier than I. I’m suspicious of any movement that has to hide behind the word "choice." Whether it’s abortion or subsidizing private schools, people with bad ideas avoid saying what they’re actually for.
• "She used both of them in this diatribe with a shameless disregard for the facts or the truth." Hey, maybe she’s a Nazi, but the law doesn’t let you libel Nazis, either. We will now wait in vain for any assertions by SCRG that anything she said was untrue, much less "shamelessly" so.
• "Ms. Scoppe recklessly labels South Carolinians for Responsible Government and other groups’ activities as ‘white collar crime.’ " Uh, hello. No she didn’t. Reading comprehension problem time. Her actual text: "The poker barons were more dangerous, in the sense that street
  crime is more dangerous than white-collar crime." It’s called an analogy. Look into it.
• "She is a partisan, liberal Democrat." When they try to make a case for this one, I want to be in the room. It should be entertaining. One quick example: Cindi is the one who has to keep coming to Mark Sanford’s defense when I get fed up with him (it’s becoming a full-time job, and, truth be told, she’s starting to agree with me sometimes). For the record, no one on my editorial board is a partisan, or I wouldn’t have chosen him or her to work with us. That’s just insulting. The amusing part is when they call her "liberal" and "Democrat." Of course, there is no evidence offered here — circumstantial or otherwise. How could there be? None exists.

… tell you what — to save your time and mine, let’s just stop skipping over all the plain silly stuff (although all the stuff about her "screaming" — coming from people talking about Goebbels — is a lot of fun) and go to their out-and-out false assertions of "fact"…

• "While complying with all applicable laws." Say what? They can argue that the law is unconstitutional if they wish. But the fact is
  that the law does require them to report their spending, and they have refused
  to comply with it.
• "She is doing it to advance liberal political candidates and causes." Such as? I can think of some folks we’ve endorsed over in the Democratic primary who might be described as "liberal" — but only here in South Carolina and few other places. But in the Republican primary, which is what we’re talking about here? Who? Where? In what sense?
• "Destroy your opponents’ credibility through lies and distortions." Once again, give us one example in which Cindi (as opposed to some other people we could name if we wanted to get picky) has done this. And remember the rule: You can’t make it up! She has to have actually done it, and you actually have to have a plausible argument that it’s untrue.

I realize we’re playing by tough rules, requiring actual facts and all, but publishing the op-ed page South Carolina’s largest newspaper is not the same as throwing junk on the Web site of some lame, ranting advocacy group. We’re kind of particular about this fact stuff, and if you don’t know what one is, you’re going to have trouble keeping up.

We’ve got this regular thing going on with SCouRGe: We write a piece explaining the facts about something that touches on them in any way, they write a wildly overheated response that argues with things we didn’t say. We tell them their response doesn’t address the actual piece we ran. Then, the routine goes one of two ways: They can take the hint and give us a letter that does respond to what we had published (they did that last time), or they can say they don’t want it changed — in which case we ditch it and move on to something relevant.

In either case, they will send out the original, absurd version to whip up their base. That’s sort of the point of the game. Getting us to help them make their case is a fringe benefit, if achievable. If not, they gripe to their base about us not publishing their fantasies. Win-win. (And I see it’s already up on their site. Oh, I love this touch: "CENSORED BY THE STATE … AGAIN!" Let’s see… I told them I’d put it on my blog, and here it is. And they got it up on their site before I did. So, how exactly are they being "censored"? Somebody get a dictionary.)

It really wasn’t achievable with the latest piece they sent us, purportedly a response to this piece by Cindi (she seems to be in the news on this blog today, probably because she’s the main writer on most of the state primary races).

First, their piece, unedited. I will discuss it in the next post:

The State’s Propaganda Machine in High Gear
By Randy Page
    Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, followed two primary rules when brainwashing the German public.  The first was to tell a big lie loud enough and long enough so that people would eventually start to believe it.  The second rule was to always accuse your enemy of your own worst crime.
     I was reminded of this when reading Cindi Scoppe’s most recent pathetic rant against school choice and limited government supporters.  Ms. Scoppe clearly has learned Goebbels’ methods well.  She used both of them in this diatribe with a shameless disregard for the facts or the truth.
     Ms. Scoppe recklessly labels South Carolinians for Responsible Government and other groups’ activities as “white collar crime.”  She knows very well that allegations against us were nothing more than political maneuvers and that we have not been charged with any crime.  She also knows that the one issue currently active has broad Constitutional free speech implications and that we are looking for clarity through the federal judicial system.
  But that doesn’t matter to Ms. Scoppe.  She throws mud and then hides behind her “press credentials.”  She uses her free speech rights to attempt to deny us and any other group she opposes that very right.  That’s the height of hypocrisy.
     For all her screaming and high-pitched assaults, Ms. Scoppe wants to hide the fact that she is a partisan, liberal Democrat working for an out-of-state corporation that has engaged in repeated efforts to influence the outcome of elections while reporting to no one.  “We are the press and cannot be regulated,” she will scream.  And we would agree.
     But if she and her comrades are free to act in such a manner, why does she have such a problem with an in-state non-profit organization discussing issues that may or may not affect the outcome of political debate while complying with all applicable laws?
     Simple.  She attacks us because we advocate for less government, more individual freedom, lower taxes, greater personal property rights, parental choice in education, and an end to the controlled political environment that has kept hundreds of thousands of South Carolinians out of the process.  She opposes all these things – as do most of the major candidates they back.
     It is a fair question to ask why she and the State newspaper editorial page would attack us and other conservative groups so intensely.  The answer is they want to silence us.  They want to tarnish our good name so that when we engage in debate or issue discussion our words are deemed suspect.  She is engaging in pure character assassination.   And, she is doing it to advance liberal political candidates and causes.
     This, of course, was another of Mr. Goebbels’ methods – whenever possible, destroy your opponents’ credibility through lies and distortions.  Yes, Ms. Scoppe has learned her lessons well.  And that’s too bad for the reputation of the State as well as the people subjected to her sleazy, unethical tactics.
     Luckily for groups such as ours, her opinion and that of the State newspaper is absolutely insignificant.  The most recent election results are a testament to that fact.

Randy Page is President of SCRG, a statewide non-profit grassroots organization that advocates limited government and education reform through school choice on behalf of its 200,000 supporters across the state.

Don’t miss Actual Reality, coming to a blog near you, right after this post.