John Boehner is striking back at the New York Times over the left-wing paper’s shoddy hit piece on the Minority Leader. The inaccurate Times story came just days after Barack Obama decided he needed a new Republican Party bogeyman and that Boehner is his man. The timing is sheer coincidence, I’m sure.

There is no surer sign that the liberal establishment is threatened by Leader Boehner than the story that will appear in tomorrow’s (9/12) New York Times (link here), a story that ignores basic facts, contains numerous factual inaccuracies and distortions, and was written by a reporter that refused to include on-the-record statements from Boehner staff until after the story had already appeared on the paper’s website.

The release goes point-by-point, correcting the Times story and pointing out the left’s blatant hypocrisy on the issue of working with activists.

Boehner’s office also notes that the Times, a supposedly non-partisan source, published the accusations but refused to allow direct quotes from the Minority Leader’s staff:

Despite the implication of the story, Boehner’s press staff cooperated with the piece and provided two on-the-record quotes which would have provided some much-needed perspective. Here are two quotes left on the cutting room floor for the story that first appeared on the paper’s website:

“Like Speaker Pelosi or Sen. Reid, Boehner has a number of friends and former aides that he keeps in touch with who live and work in Washington.”

“Doing outreach and building coalitions of outside groups is part of the job of the Congressional Leadership. Like the American people, Boehner – a former small-businessman – is most concerned right now about the issue of jobs, so he often speaks with employers, rather than, for example, labor unions or environmentalists who support job-killing policies.”

Only after Boehner staff again contacted the New York Times did the reporter include one of these quotes in the story.

None of this should come as a surprise, of course. The New York Times has a long and sordid history of acting as an attack dog for the left-wing. Obama, unable to use his own record to help his party in November, decided to make John Boehner his bogeyman. The Times followed up with a helpful — yet inaccurate — hit piece on the same man. Pathetic but, again, unsurprising.