The Myth Of ‘Bipartisan’ War Opposition
Opponents of the Iraq War are quite fond of pointing to lone Republicans standing in opposition to our policy in Iraq as proof that Bush faces ‘bipartisan’ opposition to his plans. This is no more accurate than pointing to Joe Lieberman as proof the Democrats support the war.
As an example, one need look no further than today’s vote by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to oppose the ‘surge’. CBS puts a subheader about growing GOP opposition on its story, yet Chuck Hagel, who has opposed the President on the war since its inception, was the lone Republican to vote for the non-binding resolution:
The vote was 12-9 and largely along party lines.“We better be damn sure we know what we’re doing, all of us, before we put 22,000 more Americans into that grinder,” said Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, the sole Republican to join 11 Democrats in support of the measure.
How that reporting supports the headline is impossible to reconcile without recourse to liberal media bias. In fact, a more accurate subheader would be, “Public confidence in the surge is increasing”:
According to a CBS News Poll conducted online by Knowledge Networks immediately after the speech, a slim majority of speech-watchers — 52 percent — favor sending an additional 20,000 troops to Iraq. This is an improvement from before the speech, when just 43 percent of the same people supported sending more troops.
What’s that? A majority who watched the SOTU favor the ‘surge’? Surely that’s newsworthy!
But of course, that doesn’t fit the narrative the national media has largely decided on, so no matter – ‘growing GOP opposition’ it is!…
UPDATE 2:45 p.m.: To be sure, there is some Republican opposition to the ‘surge’ itself, and in fairness, I should point out that part of the article, as well:
At least eight other Republican senators say they now back legislative proposals registering objections to Mr. Bush’s decision to boost U.S. military strength in Iraq by 21,500 troops.
The growing list — which includes Sens. Gordon Smith, George Voinovich and Sam Brownback — has emboldened Democrats, who are pushing for a vote in the full Senate by next week to rebuke the president’s Iraq policy…
“I wonder whether the clock has already run out,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. She said she was worried that U.S. troops in Iraq are already perceived “not as liberators but as occupiers.”
Responding to a question of whether President Bush deserves a second chance in Iraq, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith, “It’s not so much him as much as are we going to give it another shot to bring some modicum of success so we don’t have chaos which would cause us to return under even perhaps more difficult circumstances.
“If we fail there’s going to be chaos in the region,” McCain said.
But that opposition is still the exception, and not the rule, with Republican lawmakers, and it’s generally limited to the additional troop request…
Jeez, Mark:
You must have read my mind…I just updated the post with that same section! I didn’t want to seem like I was ignoring that part of the article…
More to the point, though – I don’t deny that there are more Republicans who oppose the war now than did a year ago – and next year, there will be even more. That’s bound to happen as the war goes on, and people get weary – but I don’t think it’s accurate at all to characterize opposition to the war as ‘bipartisan’.
Where you stand on Iraq is still largely determined by your party affiliation, though not, of course, exclusively…
Fargus: If Mark keeps saying liberal bias it will become true. It’s as though every single time Bob Somerby has shown a worthless hack describe Dems in an awful light but the same people give, shall we say, “better” treatment to Reps, it just plain doesn’t exist.
Mark: For every anecdotal piece of evidence you have of liberal bias, I’ll show you one with republican bias. Just scroll through the dailyhowler archives. Pretty much once/twice a day he has something for the past 6 years! Latest topic of his involves calling McCain “straight talk” and Rudy “America’s Mayor” while calling Clinton “unelectable”…she polls better than McCain! My god!
The editorializing of news is a big problem in general and it has bias in neither direction. Divining how a politician feels or what they are trying to accomplish by saying a certain thing has become quite a popular undertaking. It’s disgusting and it cuts both ways. Why do you keep pretending it’s a one sided thing? I’m sick of the lack of objectivity in the newspaper…and putting a column by “K-Lo” and Millbank on opposite sides of the page is not objective, it’s sickening…*blah*.
Mike, the only academic studies I’m aware of have shown that liberal media bias is a fact, not an impression…if you’re aware of academic studies that show the opposite, please cite them.
Here’s one of the most recent and prominent…
Up until now, my only reason for opposing Brownback was his lack of ability to win a general election.
Now I oppose him on his lack of ability to win a war.
Mark, that study is garbage; it’s methodology is laughable. There are plenty of devastating take-downs of it out there on the internets. The press corps is a bunch of fatuous, beltway elites, but the notion that they have some sort of systemic bias toward Democrats is just Republican fantasy. They’re fickle, lazy, and prone to sensationalism, but they are every bit as hard on Dems as they are on Repubs. Indeed, I get the sense that much of the press corps is so eager not be accused of being “liberal” that they go out of their way to mock prominent Dems. You really should spend some time in the Daily Howler archives.
As for your main point, I think you’re totally wrong. I think opposition to the war is far more bipartisan than even the numbers indicate. I’d bet you a lot of money that there are a significant percentage of Republicans in Congress who have turned against the war (or were never very enthusiatic about it in the first place) who have not yet voiced their feelings publicly. I suspect that many Republicans are either 1) afraid to offend the Republican base, which still largely supports the president or 2) fear it will be too damaging to the party if they part ways with the president at this point.
I suspect the number of Republicans in Congress who actually think the “surge” is going to work or is a “good” idea is far, far less than the number who have nominally voiced support for it.
Well, Anonymous, they’re scared, because they think the ship might be sinking and they don’t won’t to be caught on deck – they’re politicians, after all, and they panic easily. So naturally, they start to hem and haw and hedge their bets…nevertheless, whenever a vote is taken, the Republicans still seem to fall in line, for the most part…
And Anonymous, same challenge to you as to Mike – if you’re aware of an academic study that DOESN’T show systemic liberal bias, please send me a cite – the Daily Howler is anecdotal, and carries no weight. Funny that you would balance THAT against a study that, whatever your opinion of its merits, at least HAS a methodology (I’m not knocking the site, I’m just saying it proves nothing)…
I just copied this to send to a liberal friend and this seems like a good spot for it also.
George Bush could balance the budget, eliminate the deficit, achieve parity in trade, and develop a cure for AIDS and liberals would still call for his head on a pike. The giant sand trap in the center of Dubya’s putting green is that liberals cannot reconcile themselves to the fact that Clinton was not only a sleaze but a criminal who got caught literally with his pants down and that Al Gore is a wuss who didn’t get into the Oval Office as “he was supposed to.”
What most liberals want in high office is a pot-smoking, guitar-playing, hip, cool, groovy, black, lesbian who is anti-war, anti-religion, and anti-heartland, one who wants to buy the world a Coke and sing “Kumbaya” around a holistically projected campfire in a simulated old-growth forest and miraculously end strife and hunger and disease and despair through her personal charm and charisma.
Well, guys, as I often heard from my uncles . . . you know, that generation that won WWII . . . “Why don’t you wish in one hand and sh** in the other and see which one gets full faster?”
Ron’s words (from the Grouchy old Cripple)
Ah, proving the negative. Look, “media bias” is just not the sort of thing that is sesceptible to empirical study. Determining whether something is biased is a totally subjective determination. Just look at your complaint above. If I were trying to document cases of bias, I certainly wouldn’t include your example. But you probably would.
If you actually ready the nitty-gritty methodology of that study you cite, you’ll see how totally random and arbitrary it is. There’s just no way to measure this kind of stuff. Anecdotal evidence is all we’ll ever have, and we won’t even be able to agree on the anecdotes half the time. So my point is this: those who claim that the existence of a systemic media bias (one way or the other) is a “fact” are actually expressing an opinion, and opinion that has no empirical basis.
So you just dismiss the possibility that bias can be measured and declare victory? Neat trick…
[...] This post a couple of weeks ago got me in some trouble with my more left-leaning leadership, largely because I titled it “The Myth of ‘Bipartisan’ War Opposition”. I freely admit that the title was a big of attention-grabbing hyperbole, but the point I wanted to make was, I think, salient. Let me quote from the post: Opponents of the Iraq War are quite fond of pointing to lone Republicans standing in opposition to our policy in Iraq as proof that Bush faces ‘bipartisan’ opposition to his plans. This is no more accurate than pointing to Joe Lieberman as proof the Democrats support the war. [...]