One look at circulation and ad sales and it’s plain to see that this kind of advocacy journalism is killing the New York Times:
The Senate primary in Delaware on Tuesday was prompting anxiety among party officials, who feared that a victory by Christine O’Donnell, a candidate backed by the Tea Party, could complicate Republican efforts to win control of the Senate. Republican leaders rushed to the aid of Representative Michael N. Castle, a moderate lawmaker and former governor, as internal party warfare — including accusations of a death threat — intensified on the eve of the primary.
I must admit, after several years of shamelessly open bias, it’s good to see the Times getting back to its more subtle ways of old. It managed to belch out two key DNC talking points for the November elections and almost make it look like real reporting.
Talking Point #1:
“Those crazy Tea Partiers will be the death of the GOP!” You see, according the think-inside-the-boxers (pun completely intended), if Tea Party fave Christine O’Donnell wins, the GOP has no hope of taking back the Senate. Because Mike Castle is mucho electable. But he’s afraid of losing to Christine O’Donnell. It all goes through the looking glass after that.
Talking Point #2:
“Those crazy Tea Partiers are violent!” After all, there were “accusations of a death threat.” Away from the New York Times we call that a rumor. But the implication is pretty clear. Mention the death threat right after mentioning that his opponent has the support of a Tea Party and let the readers’ minds collide with a conclusion that’s just been put in front of them. My friends who always claim there is no bias ignore the deftly insidious moves like this.
The Senate contests in Delaware and New Hampshire were being watched closely by Democratic leaders, who believe that divisive purity tests in Republican primaries have improved their chances of retaining their majority.
The notion of the Republicans taking back the Senate only very recently moved out of the realm of “pure fantasy” and into one of “just slightly better odds than winning the lottery.” I’m not even convinced they’ll take back the House (never underestimate the ability of the RNC to completely screw up an election). However, if the press and the national party keep acting as if it’s a real possibility, it becomes easier to blame the Tea Party after it doesn’t happen. Even if it probably wasn’t going to happen anyway. Convenient, no?
In fact, the establishment GOP and MSM seem to be perversely in sync on this meme. The Tea Party movement will be put in a position the left is forever putting conservatives in: being forced to prove a negative. Only this time the lefties are righties, too. Sort of.
The “divisive purity tests” are a myth. Voters on the right have just gotten clocked two elections in a row and are simply not in the mood to support candidates who offer nothing more than what’s already proven to be a losing message. Whenever the establishment says “electable,” concerned voters need only to respond: “So…President John McCain, right?”
“Electability” may actually be the dirtiest word in this election for anyone outside the GOP establishment.
“Republicans have chosen extremists to be their nominees, and this has changed the political map of the cycle,” said Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “In a year where Republicans want these races to be all about Democrats, Republican nominees who have extreme positions help us make the contrasts we need to make.”
Let’s suspend all disbelief here for a second and forget that the Speaker of the House of Representatives hails from a district so far out in the ideological hinterlands that it can’t see America from its front porch. The Democratic brain trust realized that it can’t possibly run on the train wreck it orchestrated since getting its mandate in 2008, so it’s decided to portray any viable conservative Republican candidates as “extremists.” Naturally, the Times fulfills its duty by making sure a quote about it makes it into the article.
While avoiding anything more descriptive than calling Castle, “a fixture in state politics,” the Times made sure we knew this about Christine O’Donnell:
Ms. O’Donnell, who until this year was a perennial candidate who struggled with her finances and other elements of her personal life…
The limp opposition to O’Donnell from all sides has been about her personal life and not her politics. Mike Castle’s record as a Republican is abysmal, at best. In fact, he seems to have no Republican instincts whatsoever. Yet all the talk is about O’Donnell’s rent.
Anti-O’Donnell types have also been portraying her as slightly crazy. She gave one bad interview and it was Palin/Couric all over again. I had the chance to talk with her a couple of times at Right Online in Las Vegas last July (I also interviewed her) and if she’s crazy she was doing an extraordinary job of keeping it hidden. For the record, most of the people I’ve talked to who say this haven’t actually met her.
The Times also lets us know that a prominent beltway conservative group didn’t endorse O’Donnell. Two things should be pointed out here. The first is that, had said Beltway group endorsed her, it wouldn’t have meant anything at all to the New York Times. The second is that Beltway types have been getting pretty much everything wrong this entire election cycle.
The one constant throughout all the Tea Party hoopla is that those involved in it have refused to let their detractors define them. The 9/12 rallies around the country last Sunday were proof of that. I spoke at the rally in Washington, D.C., and saw nothing but sincere people who want the real change that was talked about so much in 2008. This infuriates the MSM and the national GOP, two groups that have long been used to controlling the narrative. Having been forced to acquiesce and cover the movement as a legitimate political force, the press has now doubled-down and decided to warn us all that the Tea Party is so powerful that it will destroy the Republican party. This is especially delicious in light of the fact that this same group of people spent a year telling us that the Tea Party movement was inconsequential. What was once an astroturfed group of nobodies is now the Death Star that will destroy the Republican party.
The Times and other media outlets are flailing about, trying to recapture some sort of relevance and power. They will all, no doubt, cherry-pick election results in November to prove the destructive power of the Tea Party movement and its crazed, purity-tested candidates.
And, as they have been since the beginning of the movement, they’ll be wrong about pretty much all of it.
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