Presumptive Repub Guv Nominee Tom Emmer of Delano feels people (his opponents and members of the media) are saying untrue things about him, so on Emmerforgov.com, he has launched a feature called "EmmerTruth," in which he will set the record straight about distortions of his record, position and statements.

The first couple of entries, though, are pretty weak. In one, he complains that MPR reporter Tom Scheck said that Emmer would cut $20 billion in state spending. But Emmer says he never said he would cut $20 billion, only that he could.

Just on the face of it, this one seems to be slicing the baloney kinda thin. Even in trying to slap down the Scheck piece, EmmerTruth doesn't say that Emmer won't cut that much, just that he didn't say he would.

EmmerTruth also doesn't link to the actual piece it is criticizing, which costs more points for intellectual honesty. In the online evnironment, if we want credibility, we make it easy to check our work. But it's gotta be this piece, a very strong piece of reporting by Scheck, that contains several devastating knockdowns of Emmer claims. And EmmerTruth doesn't take any of them on.

But it gets worse. The Scheck piece doesn't even commit the one arguable word-choice problem that Emmer alleges. Scheck's piece actually uses Emmer's preferred word — could —  not "will" to describe the cuts that Emmer has talked about making. Maybe MPR changed the text after getting pushback from Team Emmer, although I doubt it. But I did listen to the audio, which is available on the same MPR file, and Scheck went with Emmer's "could" language.

Looking at the Scheck piece and the EmmerTruth knockdown, I've about convinced myself that Emmer owes Scheck an apology. And he owes the voters of Minnesota some straighter talk, not about what he could do, but what he would do to balance the budget. (Not to say that all the other guv candidates have been clear abut how they would do it. They haven't.)

Round two

EmmerTruth has a second example of alleged unfairness committed by unnamed bloggers and twitterers in taking an Emmer quote out of context.

Emmer did say, to the Marshall Independent:

"I don't think you can call yourself a freedom-loving American and be a Democrat," Emmer said. "I don't think that's a grassroots Democrat who says now 'That's not what I voted for, this isn't the America I want.' It's the leaders of the Democrat party."

I wrote about that one myself a couple of weeks ago, as an example of how conservatives and Republicans sometimes claim to be the only ones who care about freedom. The Emmer remark, as reproduced above, is the full quote, as least far as the Marshall paper used it. And when I used it, I went out of my way to note the second sentence and to gig DFLers who were using only the first sentence. It's reasonable to assume that Emmer recognized that his first Democrats-don't-love-freedom remark was over the top, so he tried to amend it on the fly so that it applied only to Democratic "leaders."

In Chapter Two of EmmerTruth, Team Emmer suggests that those who use the first sentence without the second are committing a major distortion. I have some sympathy here (although strangely, Emmer didn't cite a single specific instance of anyone doing this; my own reference to the out-of-context use of the quote was pinned on a DFL press release, not the media).

But then, dang it, EmmerTruth practically confirms that Emmer actually said what he meant to say in the out-of-context first sentence. EmmerTruth clarifies that:

"Freedom-loving Minnesotans of all political parties — Republicans, Independents, and those who in the past have considered themselves to be Democrats — are fed up with a government that doesn’t listen and takes away freedoms."

Cheese Louise, EmmerTruth, so instead of meaning to say that no Democrats can consider themselves freedom-loving, Rep. Emmer meant to insult only those who still consider themselves to be Democrats.