Today’s Arizona Republic is a perfect example of the coordination of Democrat politicians and their allies in the media.  In a top-of-the-fold story in the Valley and State section, reporter Matt Benson writes a heavily-tilted story with the clear intent of promoting the Democrat talking points about their attempt to reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

Benson sets up the story in the classic “for the children” argument – even getting Gov. Napolitano to say exactly that: “We’re talking about health insurance for children here.”

Then Rep. Mitchell gets to chime in calling the veto “unconscionable” and “Every child should have health insurance.” 

Benson then makes sure to point out that Arizona ranks fourth-worst for its percentage of uninsured children, but makes nary a mention about the huge illegal alien population in the state which drives that number.

Congressman John Shadegg is quoted as saying that the Democrat proposal was “not directed at uninsured poor or nearly poor children.” However, there is no explanation from Benson of why that is.  Conveniently left out of the story are very important facts about the Democrat bill:  it would do nothing about the problem of state’s covering adults – including childless adults (remember, this is the Children’s Health Insurance Program), it covers children in families earning as much as $83,000 per year (not exactly poor, or near poor), and it uses a massive 61-cent-per-pack tax increase on cigarettes to help pay for this expansion.

Tim Bee gets a cameo quote, which was likely a set-up by Benson so that Giffords can try to use it against him in the event he officially runs against her.

The capstone of the deceit in the story comes near the end when Benson writes “Shadegg suggested that the expansion would lead to more people dumping private coverage in favor of government assistance.”  As Benson writes it, it makes it sound like Shadegg pulled that out of thin air – just made it up.  What Benson failed to write was that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office study shows that, under the Democrat proposal, for every child added to the rolls of SCHIP, one child will leave private coverage – a direct one-to-one correlation.

After quoting Shadegg about people leaving private coverage, Benson writes the following line: “Mitchell called that claim a “scare tactic” and “phony argument.””

Hence, Mitchell shows that he is not above deceit in order to follow the Democrat marching orders.  We’ll wait to see the next time Mitchell tries to use analysis from CBO to advance whatever argument he is making – then we can tell him that he is using a “scare tactic” and a “phony argument.”