Will <em>Politico</em> Get Its Own 'No Shame Award'?

Where's Mike Allen to present a "No Shame Award" when you need him? Politico's Jake Sherman on Monday published a story on a House Republicans effort to brand Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) budget proposal purely as a way to balance the federal budget. The aim is to drive home "balanced budget" as a theme before Democrats can stigmatize the Ryan plan as an axe to social safety net programs. Yahoo! News's Chris Moody had essentially the same story -- seven days prior. Moody's colleague, Olivier Knox, first noticed the similarities in the stories in a tweet Wednesday morning. How similar are they? An excerpt from Sherman's story: Instead of focusing on selling the conversion of Medicare into a premium support program, Republicans will incessantly pound home the theme of balancing the budget, GOP leaders say. When talking about the Democrats’ plan, Republicans criticize it for attempting to raise taxes and the fact that it doesn’t balance the budget. And here's Moody's: [Republicans'] ability to strike back is made easier by the fact that Senate Democrats will attempt, for the first time since 2009, to pass their own budget resolution. That proposal, according to early reports, will seek to shrink the deficit by combining a series of tax increases with moderate spending cuts, which Democrats religiously refer to as "a balanced approach." Unlike the Republican budget, the Democratic outline does not balance the federal budget in the foreseeable future. To its credit, Politico is often at the front of politics news stories just like this one. But Allen, author of the widely read Politico Playbook, recently made such a stink over NYT's Jonathan Weisman running a similar report to a Politico story that ran just one day earlier. “You can’t try to pass something off as new, when the people who care the most about the topic have read the same thing 24 hours earlier," Allen lectured NYT in a Saturday edition of Playbook last month. "You’re The New York Times: Be confident!" We've emailed Allen to see if he'll be presenting Politico with its own "No Shame Award."

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Will Politico Get Its Own 'No Shame Award'?

Eddie Scarry

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Eddie Scarry