Politico‘s Mike Allen let Sonia Sotomayor’s SCOTUS nomination sink in for a couple days before settling on this fresh, and provocative analysis.
[T]he media’s left-of-center bias is rarely more apparent than during court fights. The coverage running up to the pick was slanted heavily toward the notion of how “pragmatic” Obama’s legal views are and how unlikely he was to pick a liberal.
Now we haven’t done a sampling survey the way Allen apparently has, but I seem to recall at least a handful of reports about “concern” that Obama’s front-runner (and now nominee) might lack the intellectual heft and good manners “necessary” to sit on the Court.
That, of course, was all basically laid to rest by the sorts of experts “concerned” reporters by and large didn’t bother to call–a fact that explain why Allen’s colleague, Jeanne Cummings reported today that, “[w]ith scant material for direct attacks, some social conservatives are trying to taint Sotomayor by association, namely with Obama.”
It’s an odd gambit to attack somebody by associating them with resoundingly popular things–but if there isn’t much to criticize on the merits, I guess that’s all they’ve got. And, obviously, that’s not a sign of “left-of-center bias” either.
