Pulling A MacManus

I coined the term "pulling a MacManus." Pulling a MacManus is when a jouralist is facing deadline and need a conventional wisdom quote that turns out to be incorrect. Journalists will call USF political science professor Susan ManManus were such nuggets of wisdom about how Republicans were going to win to 2006 midterm elections big-time.

Do a search for "Susan MacManus on Google News and you will find pages of her giving bad predictions to political beat reporters. MacManus is horribly wrong about the Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act.

"Clearly the economy and jobs is still going to preeminent," she said. "But what this ruling does do is interweave healthcare as a cost item and a job creation item into the debate. So in a way, it sort of joins the two issues."

Actually, Obama and Romney stopped talking about the ACA a week after the ruling. Obama got hammered in the midterms on health care and Romney's Massachusetts heallth care has the unpopular mandate. Both candidates would rather talk about anything, but health care. MacManus then makes a hysterical prediction.

"With this 5 to 4 ruling and one that seems very divided--they ruled one way on the Commerce Clause and another way on the tax clause," she said. "If anything, I think that their favorability ratings may be going down a little bit and they may be seen by, particularly independents, as just another politicized Washington institution."

The substance of MacManus' argument is Americans are going to be unhappy with the Supreme Court because of its interpretation of the Commerce Clause. Does she actually believes the casual independent voters she speaks of are going to be that legally nuisanced. MacManus points out she is speaking about independents that don't follow the news cycle religiously.

Will journalists please stop getting quotes from MacManus. It is lazy writing.