Concealing past relationships can be difficult in politics, so either they wanted to believe too hard to bother validating his bio, or were just even more lazy than they usually accuse the other side of being (I'm admittedly assuming there's not much difference in conservatives regardless of locale - and, yes, I get the irony of doing so although my progressive American opinion doesn't really matter in Australia).

Makes me almost giddy to say "how's that taste of your own medicine?"