Yonivore
01-11-2005, 04:42 PM
Okay, I ripped this off from James Taranto...but, wait, now that I've given him credit I guess I didn't really rip it off after all:
From USA Today's Jill Lawrence (http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050110/a_character10.art.htm), here is the most laughably partisan piece of reporting we've seen since the election:
Imagine a Democratic presidential candidate and his allies assailing the character of the Republican nominee in ads and speeches every day for eight months.
Having trouble? That's because Democrats generally don't have the stomach or the discipline to do it. Often they don't even effectively fight back when under attack themselves.
But with George W. Bush's second inauguration next week, Democrats are pondering their choices in a Feb. 12 election for party chairman and rethinking what might be called their character problem.
Democrats "as a group are uneasy" about attacking and defending on character, says Harold Ickes, a former Clinton aide who heads the Media Fund, a political ad organization. "But they damn well better get the stomach," he adds, because "we've seen way too many of our candidates taken down on issues of character."
It seems Jill Lawrence was in Bhutan all last year when the Democrats were busy calling President Bush a liar, a moron, a coward, a military deserter, a puppet of Dick Cheney and the Jews, and another Hitler. What are they going to say if they "get the stomach" to wage character attacks--that he's the original Hitler?
This is the sort of thing that drives conservatives crazy, but it actually illustrates why the liberal media are the Republicans' secret weapon. The Democrats are the victim of their own con game. They put out the most outrageous spin, which reporters like Lawrence dutifully regurgitate, and then Dems believe it because, hey, the "objective" media have reported it! It's as if Communist Party functionaries actually believed what was "reported" in the old Pravda.
From USA Today's Jill Lawrence (http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050110/a_character10.art.htm), here is the most laughably partisan piece of reporting we've seen since the election:
Imagine a Democratic presidential candidate and his allies assailing the character of the Republican nominee in ads and speeches every day for eight months.
Having trouble? That's because Democrats generally don't have the stomach or the discipline to do it. Often they don't even effectively fight back when under attack themselves.
But with George W. Bush's second inauguration next week, Democrats are pondering their choices in a Feb. 12 election for party chairman and rethinking what might be called their character problem.
Democrats "as a group are uneasy" about attacking and defending on character, says Harold Ickes, a former Clinton aide who heads the Media Fund, a political ad organization. "But they damn well better get the stomach," he adds, because "we've seen way too many of our candidates taken down on issues of character."
It seems Jill Lawrence was in Bhutan all last year when the Democrats were busy calling President Bush a liar, a moron, a coward, a military deserter, a puppet of Dick Cheney and the Jews, and another Hitler. What are they going to say if they "get the stomach" to wage character attacks--that he's the original Hitler?
This is the sort of thing that drives conservatives crazy, but it actually illustrates why the liberal media are the Republicans' secret weapon. The Democrats are the victim of their own con game. They put out the most outrageous spin, which reporters like Lawrence dutifully regurgitate, and then Dems believe it because, hey, the "objective" media have reported it! It's as if Communist Party functionaries actually believed what was "reported" in the old Pravda.