Decision ‘08

Red America Strikes At The WaPo

As if it weren’t abundantly apparent already, the Washington Post has given us yet another reason why it has eclipsed the New York Times - Red America. While the Times deals with conservatives by looking at them as if they are specimens in a laboratory (and hilariously naming William F. Buckley a neocon in the process), the Post has given us this:

This is a blog for the majority of Americans.

Since the election of 1992, the extreme political left has fought a losing battle. Their views on the economy, marriage, abortion, guns, the death penalty, health care, welfare, taxes, and a dozen other major domestic policy issues have been exposed as unpopular, unmarketable and unquestioned losers at the ballot box.

Democrats who have won major elections since 1992 have, with very few exceptions, been the ones who distanced themselves from the shrieking denizens of their increasingly extreme base, soft-pedaled their positions on divisive issues and adopted the rhetoric and positions of the right — pro-free market, pro-business, pro-faith, tough on crime and strongly in favor of family values.

Yet even in a climate where Republicans hold command of every branch of government, and advocate views shared by a majority of voters, the mainstream media continues to treat red state Americans as pachyderms in the mist - an alien and off-kilter group of suburbanite churchgoers about which little is known, and whose natural habitat is a discomforting place for even the most hardened reporter from the New York Times.

Imagine ever reading THAT at the Times (even without the slam at the end).

What a breath of fresh air…

20 Responses to “Red America Strikes At The WaPo”

1 T. Longren Says:
March 21st, 2006 at 4:34 pm
Washington Post Gets Red

The ever-liberal Washington Post is starting up a new blog. The blog is named Red America and is being run by Ben Domenech, co-founder of RedState.

The launch of this new blog has apparently upset some liberals. Not sure why, I thought these…
2 peter Says:
March 21st, 2006 at 4:57 pm
1) “Since the election of 1992, the extreme political left has fought a losing battle.” Uh, the extreme political left has never fought a winning battle, for at least the past few generations. Can you name anyone from the “extreme left” who was elected to high political office in the past hundred years?

We have never had an “extreme left” President, and the left edge of the Senate would be someone like Tom Harkin or Ted Kennedy, and the left edge of the House someone like Barney Frank. Perhaps you consider them extreme leftists (I don’t) – but that is as far as it goes. The writer insinuates that somehow the extreme left ran the Democratic party until 1992, and then went off the deep end with “unpopular, unmarketable and unquestioned losers” for candidates and issues. It just ain’t so.

2) “In a climate where Republicans hold command of every branch of government, and advocate views shared by a majority of voters…” The majority of voters favor at least a limited right to abortion, oppose the Iraqi invasion, and oppose budget deficits. Recent polling asking “which party should have control of Congress” has tilted Democratic. If the Democratic platform is so different from the views “shared by a majority of voters,” then why is it that the majority of voters now wants to elect Democrats?

3) “The mainstream media continues to treat red state Americans as pachyderms in the mist.” They do? Any examples? Or is the reader supposed to accept it as an a priori truth that mainstream Americans are misunderstood and ignored by the Times and the rest of the mainstream press?
3 Mark Says:
March 21st, 2006 at 5:01 pm
Ask a red state Bush supporter sometime how well the New York Times and the rest of the mainstream press understands them…kudos to the Post for letting a conservative speak for conservatives…
4 too many steves Says:
March 21st, 2006 at 5:06 pm
Polls are not elections. The voters have consistently affirmed the positions and policies of the Republicans in the only way that matters: by voting for them.
5 Jack Rich Says:
March 21st, 2006 at 5:09 pm
A pleasant surprise, this a.m. when I opened the WaPo homepage. The Times, my hometown paper, writes about conservatives as though viewing them in a zoo. And they’ve even got a reporter for the knuckle-dragging beat, David Kirkpatrick. And his articles come across as patronizing and as though they were written by a clueless Victorian-era missionary among the headhunters.

I’ve been reading both the Times and the Post for going on 40 years, and the Times continues its descent into Moveon.org hell. The Post, although reliably left-of-center, does show signs of actually being a great newspaper, with some balance.

Now if the Post could just stop having lefties like Dan Balz stop telling me what Republicans are going to be doing…
6 peter Says:
March 21st, 2006 at 5:22 pm
Well, now. That got a response in a hurry.

Asking a red state Bush supporter how well the Times understands him is akin to asking a Deaniac how well Rush Limbaugh understands him. Since the blame-the-media meme is at the core of Republican politics, I’m not sure you would get a fair answer.

If “the voters have consistently affirmed the positions and policies of the Republicans,” why did the Presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 have razor thin margins? And why did a majority of Americans vote for Democratic Senators? Moreover, even the most loyal Bush apologist would concede that much has changed since the last elections, both for Bush’s popularity and for the GOP in general. If the 2004 election were held again today, do you seriously think that George Bush would win?

As for David Kirkpatrick: he was a college classmate of mine (actually he is one year ahead of me). So it must be the education we both received.
7 peter Says:
March 21st, 2006 at 5:23 pm
Not to mention that Jonathan Landsman, who is the managing editor of the Times, was in the same class as Kirkpatrick, as well as Jim Warren of the Chicago Tribune. Also Cullen Murphy (formerly of Atlantic Magazine, now Vanity Fair.) Must have been something in the food they served at Amherst way back when.
8 Mark Says:
March 21st, 2006 at 6:23 pm
Peter, then you admit that the Times is to the left as Rush Limbaugh is to the right? Well, nice to see it out in the open, at least…

Cullen Murphy is at Vanity Fair now? I knew there were some changes at the Atlantic Monthly (a magazine that I highly prize, by the way) - but I guess I haven’t been paying enough attention…
9 Filecloser Says:
March 21st, 2006 at 6:29 pm
” If the 2004 election were held again today, do you seriously think that George Bush would win?”

If it was still between him and Kerry, hell yes.
10 peter Says:
March 21st, 2006 at 6:30 pm
I think the editorial page is pretty firmly left, with the exception of David Brooks. However, I think the news side of the business is very even-handed, and not as elitist and close-minded as the excerpt suggests.

Cullen went to Vanity Fair this week — it was announced a few days ago –
11 peter Says:
March 21st, 2006 at 6:31 pm
” If the 2004 election were held again today, do you seriously think that George Bush would win?”

If it was still between him and Kerry, hell yes.

No way — with everything that has gone on in the past two years, Kerry would bounce Bush’s head down the court like a basketball –
12 Muffin the Cat Says:
March 21st, 2006 at 6:46 pm
If the 2004 election were held again today, do you seriously think that George Bush would win? Who cares?

Are you still trying to recount the 2004 election? It is over Peter. Kerry lost. What difference does it make at this point and why do many Democrats and the Rats in the Press keep bringing this issue up? Are you that frustrated? I’m not. I’m still quite happy with my vote in November 2004. Remember Bush still has not quite three years left (actually 1036 days) on his term. First place only counts on October 1st, not January 31st of the next year.

You may be right that more voters selected Democratic Senators in the last election but that statistic is meaningless. We do not live in Democracy. We live in a Republic. Please go read the Constitution. The US has one chamber with proportional representation and one chamber with equal representation. Gives the small states more power. I think it was set up this way on purpose. It’s not my fault that most of the states that have elected Democrats are high population states whereas most of the states that have elected Repubs are low population states.

I still think there is a good chance he will get another Supreme Court nominee. Can’t wait. I hope he picks Janice Rogers Brown.
13 peter Says:
March 21st, 2006 at 7:00 pm
Not at all — merely responding to the part of the excerpt which suggested that Republicans “advocate views shared by a majority of voters.” If you use Presidential elections as a yardstick, the Democrats won the popular vote in 2000 by one percent, and lost it in 2004 by roughly two percent. It is a logical question to ask why the electorate is so evenly divided if a majority of voters agree with Republican principles.
14 Ryan Bonneville Says:
March 21st, 2006 at 7:17 pm
Peter, how does the majority feel when voting in, say, House elections? Last time I checked, they’ve been making themselves clear there since 1994.

Also, it’s spectacularly hilarious that you compare the Times to Rush. One of those is a news organization and one is a pundit. Are you and yours so far gone that you can’t tell the difference? (Don’t get me wrong, I can’t tell the difference when those two sources are compared, but I’m supposed to be the “knuckle-dragging” one here.)
15 peter Says:
March 21st, 2006 at 7:27 pm
The power of incumbency (only four House incumbents lost to challengers in 2004) and gerry-mandering (see: DeLay, Tom) seems to give lifetime employment to Congressmen. Let’s see: we have Presidential elections where the popular vote will see-saw between one side and the other; we have Senatorial elections where a majority of voters pull a Democratic lever; and we have Congressional elections which are basically static. The cliché is that this is a “bitterly divided electorate,” and in this case the cliché is true. The statement that a majority of Americans favor Republican policies is not supported by the facts.

If you don’t like Rush Limbaugh as an example, please feel free to substitute Fox News in his place.
16 Mark Says:
March 21st, 2006 at 8:26 pm
Fox News is actually pretty accurate. Most Fox News employees probably feel that they are ‘Republican friendly’, but balanced. Most New York Times employees probably feel that they are the opposite (i.e., friendly towards, but not biased towards, Democrats).

In each case, though, they are deluding themselves, as their biases show through pretty plainly to disinterested observers…
17 too many steves Says:
March 22nd, 2006 at 4:49 am
I’m trying to figure out how it can be that both houses of Congress are majorities for the Republicans while a majority of voters cast votes for Democrats. And spare me the math - I understand how that works. That’s like pointing out that Gore won the popular vote in 2000: irrelevant. Just more “we lost but we really won” fantasizing. The House is overwhelmingly Republican, the Senate marginally so.

2006, well, we shall see - there might be a change in the air.
18 Decision ‘08 » Blog Archive » Proof That Red America Is A Good Thing Says:
March 22nd, 2006 at 7:01 am
[…] Yesterday, I noted the unveiling of the blog Red America at the Washington Post. The Nutroots® have noticed, too - and they’re apoplectic. Why the uproar? Yes, he’s a partisan - that’s why he was hired. He’s a blogger, not an editor… […]
19 megapotamus Says:
March 22nd, 2006 at 5:44 pm
Gerrymandering is no marginal problem but DeLay’s map did not usurp some platonic ideal but a Democrat gerrymander that had kept the Texas Congressional delegation from reflecting the Republican trend in voting for the previous two census cycles at least. Now, I’m not in Texas but if some one on either side had proposed, say, a Colorodo-esque districting panel I would certainly have considered that an improvement even if it did delay or dilute immediate Rep advances BUT no such creature showed itself even when the Dems ran off to avoid a quorum call so, tough. The Dems lived large and long on borrowed time. That the ensuing wave was yet more decisive when it fell, well, I weep for them. Seriously.
Not really.
I actually didn’t care much for that opener on the blog. We’ve won elections, yes, but that doesn’t really tell you about any particular issue especially two years after said election. If the election were held today Generic Dem would probably beat Bush. Kerry? No. If only they could find that Generic Dem, sounds like a fine chap.
All this barking about majorities though as a cudgel to opponents has too much of the odor of the Bolshie. We should be talking about why we are right (which the item does though not that well), not our popularity or otherwise. But as a corrective to the drum circling types who perpetually declare that every human would pocketmulch if only they were exposed to the luminous truth, well, it is a necessity.
20 Bad Breath Remedies Says:
April 4th, 2007 at 8:30 am
stop bad breath…

May I suggest if you are suffering from bad breath to take a look…