Rep. Kenny Hulshof (R-MO) kicked off his reelection campaign in Columbia yesterday. Near the top of this article in the Columbia Tribune on how ethics scandals, Katrina and President Bush’s unpopularity could bring GOPers down, is this passage …
University of Missouri-Columbia political science Professor Rick Hardy, who helped introduce Hulshof at the rally, said Bushâs GOP connection is a challenge for Republicans seeking office this year.
“Itâs not good for those in office in the presidentâs party in the sixth year,” Hardy said. “There is a real struggle.”
In his speech, Hulshof, a five-term member of Congress, painted himself as a freethinker who sometimes rankles Republican power-holders in the U.S. House.
As members of the GOP House caucus go actually, Hulshof actually is a bit of a ‘freethinker’. He was on the ethics committee, opposed the DeLay Rule and got purged in the Night of the Long Gavels for his trouble.
Yep, I agree with Atrios and the good folks at Media Matters.
The Washington Post, or rather its online incarnation, has managed to capture the essence of the silliness of the ‘media bias’ debate in one easily digestible set-piece of its own making.
The right mau-maus Dan Froomkin’s online column, gets the wet-behind-the-ears ombudsman to write a really silly column making her own job into a venue for dumping newsroom scuttlebutt on another reporter.
The idea, the notional claim, was that the questions — or should we more gravely say, the concerns — about Froomkin’s column began with complaints from readers. Actually, not so. They started with a ‘complaint’ from a young GOP operative by the name of Patrick Ruffini who’d just come off working as official webmaster and blogger for Bush-Cheney 2004.
Like I said, mau-maued. And even pretty shabbily at that.
Now, is Dan Froomkin a ‘liberal’? I figure he probably agrees with my politics more than Newt Gingrich’s. But it is at most opinion journalism, aimed at hitting points of hypocrisy, deception or double-dealing in public officials. It’s written by a credentialed journalist. And he hits both sides.
(In any case, let’s be honest: most Dem pols who make the switch into journalism — Stephanopoulos, et al. — bend over backwards to create ‘balance’. Most Republicans use it as an extension of their political work — Tony Snow, etc. Anyway, another story for another day.)
So, to ‘balance’ Froomkin, who may be a commentator with liberal tendencies, the Post goes out and gets a high octane Republican political activist who hits the ground running with a tirade of Red State America revanchism and even journalism itself.
That’s balance. That’s the Post’s balance.
Managing perceptions is the death of good journalism, especially manufactured perceptions, and even more those manufactured for the easily cowed.
I’m embarrassed for the Post. Embarrassed by the Post.
Their explanation doesn’t cut it. If they want to make a blogger Crossfire with a firebreather on the left and on the right, they should do it. It might even be interesting. But here they’ve just been played by bullies and played for fools.
Jump! How high?
I can think of more than a few actual journalists at the Post who must feel a bit embarrassed too.
Admittedly, my post below on the Washington Post was a bit stern. So just to show I’m not all hard-hearted and a scold, a couple other opportunities for balance at the Post occurred to me.
Tom Edsall, to be balanced by Ben Ginsberg.
Walter Pincus, to be balanced by Pat Roberts.
Anyone else have other suggestions?
Little did I know this Ben Domenech gambit from the Post was a secret plot to create the grist for more Abramoff blogging.
You see, it turns out the Domenech family came in for a number of Bush administration appointments. Not only Ben, but Ben’s dad, Doug, who was White House liaison to the Department of Interior.
Or to put it more colloquially, White House guy to make sure Jack Abramoff got what he wanted with the Indians and the Pacific Island stuff.
Wayne Smith was the point man for Indian casino policy at the Department of Interior. He ended up having kind of a rough ride over at Interior. And, according to Smith, as reported last year in the Denver Post, Domenech told him “we had to pay attention to [Jack] Abramoff, because otherwise the religious right and (Ralph) Reed are going to come up and bite us, and our whole base will go crazy. They will light up our phones, shut down our phone lines.”
According to Smith, Domenech was the conduit for Abramoff operative Italia Federici. Said Smith: “Doug would come down and say, ‘Italia called and Jack wants this’ That’s how it all happened internally.”
Probably not the last fun quote from these quarters.
Duke Cunningham’s Booty gets sold to the highest bidder, just like Duke. That and other news of the day in today’s Daily Muck.
More signs that those mysterious White House MZM contracts were tied to the president’s private Iraq intel commission.
Fall of Ralph Watch.
According to a new poll out today in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Ralph Reed is dragging down the (Gov) Perdue (Lt.Gov) Reed ticket by 8 points among likely voters.
Actually, as long as we’re on the topic. I’m trying to think of the list of pols whose careers appear to be ending or near ending as a result of the Abramoff scandal.
So far I’ve got Ralph Reed, Conrad Burns, Katherine Harris and Bob Ney. Tom DeLay is another obvious contender. But that’s muddled by the fact that his own independent crimes appear to have brought him down first. Who am I not thinking of?
Late Update: Okay, my bad. This is an occupational danger of tracking all the various threads of GOP criminality. It’s the Duke Cunningham scandal, not the Abramoff scandal, that seems to be putting the nail in Katherine Harris’ political coffin.
We found another.
Apparently Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) isn’t the only member of Congress having his wife take a cut of his political contributions. Rep. John Sweeney (R-NY) has the same skimming arrangement.
Talk radio caller leaves John McCain speechless after asking the senator why his new ‘senior advisor’ is a DeLay coconspirator and tied to the New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal. Hear the audio!