Brace yourselves. It looks as though it’s going to be 2008 and 2012 all over again — where a 50 year-old GOP haircut and a 35-year-old GOP rock are big news, but Hillary will get a sweet mainstream media pass when it comes to vetting her past and formative years. Worse, any attempt by New Media to do the vetting the MSM won’t will be met with equal parts wrist-flicking and mockery.
Oh, and once again, Politico will lead the Democratic defense.
The tweets below are written by high-level Politico staffers. Politico presents itself as an objective news outlet, and these three staffers present themselves as objective journalists. Blake Hounshell is a Politico editor. Glenn Thrush and Ben White are reporters.
What they’re responding to is the news, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, that as a college student Hillary Clinton corresponded with Saul Alinsky, the godfather of community organizing, whose primary breakthrough was teaching young democratic socialists how to succeed in upending the American economic system through lying, deceit, and the democratic process. Alinsky was a Marxist who also influenced a young Barack Obama.
If you want to argue that what a 21-year-old Hillary Rodham believed matters little some 45 years later, fine. But these top Politico staffers aren’t arguing that. They are using the political tactic of mockery to downplay, dismiss, and discourage others from vetting yet another Democrat presidential contender.
Basically, what you’re seeing below is a partisan tactic designed to protect Hillary:
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And here’s the ole’ THIS IS OLD NEWS ploy:
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No biggie.
Whatever.
Who?
There’s nothing quite like watching unbiased, objective-not-at-all-liberal Politico journalists assume the role of Media Matters.
Thanks to the Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway, we know that these three gentleman work for the same unbiased, objective, not-at-all liberal outlet that literally obsesses over connecting Ayn Rand to the political right:
Every time any GOP candidate does anything other than condemn novelist Ayn Rand to hell, Politico knows to cover that. At length. Ad nauseum. See, for example, the first three items that come up when you search for her name in Politico’s search engine. Well, first there’s a poll asking if Rand Paul is named after Ayn Rand (not at all, no). Then: “Ryan’s love-hate with Ayn Rand,” “7 pols who praised Ayn Rand,” “Ayn Rand followers applaud Ryan.” A similar search for Saul Alinsky yields very bizarre results, most of them focused on making the claim that — I kid you not — it’s the right who loves Alinsky. So we have “Right loves to hate, imitate Alinsky,” “Newt Gingrich is no Saul Alinsky,” and “A Saul Alinsky Republican?” and “Rudy: Newt acting like Saul Alinsky” and “James O’Keefe is Saul Alinsky in a funhouse mirror.” You could write your own master’s thesis on why the media portrays Alinsky as an albatross around the right’s neck but then claims to not know who he is when there are fan letters between him and president-elect (too soon?) Hillary Rodham Clinton. If you did write that, you would not get a passing grade on that thesis at Wellesley or the University of Colorado, though.
As my longtime friend Ed Driscoll points out at PJ Media, Ben Smith might be gone from Politico, but the Ben Smithing continues.
I don’t mean to single out Politico. The rest of the media will surely follow suit. This is just the first real instance of editors and investigative reporters openly and aggressively pushing back, downplaying, and playing nothing-to-see here with Hillary.
And it’s only 2014.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC