Who "killed" the bill?

“I’m very disappointed,” House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., said in a statement after the vote. “The Republicans killed this.” -- Bloomberg News

Did they really?

What about the 95 Democrats who voted against the plan? All Nancy Pelosi needed to do was get a few more Democrats to vote for the plan. Why couldn't she do that?

Here's a different view of what happened:



You can make your own conclusions.

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The way the media might use this to manipulate voter opinion is to run a story with a headline: Barney Frank: "The Republicans killed this." Technically that is reporting the news -- who is blaming whom. But if they do not also run a headline of some Republican blaming a Democrat, then they are basically by omission making it look like Barney Frank is right. If they used just added one word, "Barney Frank claims the Republicans killed the bill." That at least makes it a slightly more emotionally neutral so as not to present Frank's opinion as accepted fact. But still, the way it is written in the story can lend weight to the claim and create the impression that it was the Republicans fault. How different the story about the failed bailout bill would sound if the headline were: "Nancy Pelosi's Colossal Failure" which again technically would be correct since she is the Speaker of the House and she should have been able to get the Democrats to vote with her. But this headline would leave a negative impression on her.