“Cautious Simon Won’t Be Mouthing Off, but Might Need to Speak
Up,” declares “Los Angeles Times” columnist George Skelton.
Skelton’s
column is typical of the California media’s baiting and hazing
of Bill Simon, California’s Republican candidate for governor. The
California media at once criticize Simon for adhering to positions
“too conservative” for Californians — a claim the media never
bother to prove — then criticize him for not voicing those
positions loudly enough. The game apparently is to see who can get
Simon to cry uncle first.
Since Simon isn’t talking about abortion — an obsession not
with Simon, but with California journalists covering him — the
media are now making an issue out of Simon not making an issue out
of abortion. How dare he not live up to our extremist image of him,
the California media are in effect saying.
Ronald Brownstein, who is accorded a de facto weekly Op-Ed
inside the “Los Angeles Times”’ front news section, served up this
dispassionate
analysis about Simon in Monday’s paper: “unless Simon can
concoct a better answer than ‘next question’ when pressed about
guns and abortion, history suggests he’ll have a hard time focusing
the voters’ attention on Davis’ vulnerabilities rather than his
own.”
Huh? History suggests that if a Republican answers liberal
reporters’ cheap-shot questions about abortion and guns, the media
will spend the entire campaign demonizing the Republican while his
Democratic opponent enjoys a free ride.
How can Brownstein browbeat Simon for saying “next question”
when the whole thrust of Brownstein’s opining is that Republicans
who talk about abortion and guns can’t win in the Golden State?
Suddenly journalists that demand silence from social conservatives
want them to start talking, all the while readying the latch on the
trapdoor. George Skelton, a liberal who selflessly offers avuncular
advice to the California GOP when he is not too busy taking phone
calls from Governor Davis (he admitted doing this in a lazy,
name-dropping column last year), now thinks Simon isn’t vocally
conservative enough. “Simon may need to swing more aggressively at
pitches of all speeds,” writes Skelton.
Why should Simon swing at pitches from the media aimed at his
head?
“Caution can be commendable, but heartfelt, hard-hitting
declarations — vicious murderers deserve to die — can connect
with voters, convey commitment and project leadership,” continues
Skelton.
Yes, but they can also be distorted wildly by ax-grinding
journalists like George Skelton.
Skelton writes as if he and his liberal media brethren were
innocent bystanders in the campaign: “Today California Democrats
are unified. And recently they’ve been pummeling Republican
candidates with the litmus test issues of abortion rights, gun
control and environmental protection. Simon will try to keep his
mouth muted about these things. Davis will try to goad him into
defending his positions.”
Two points: one, if the above-named issues are California litmus
tests, it’s only because the California media have decreed them so;
two, the media, hewing to Davis’ playbook, will also “goad” Simon
into defending his positions.
Skelton writes that “Simon will attempt to shift every campaign
conversation toward the economy, energy, education and spending.”
Is Skelton surprised by this when he and his colleagues stand ready
to pounce?
The media bias in the race is already comic. The Associated
Press, for example, broke the astonishing newsflash on Sunday that
Simon, a Catholic, donates to Catholic churches and causes. Can you
believe it? What is he thinking? The Associated Press further found
that these Catholic causes are “conservative.” In fact, the
“conservative-minded financier,” according to the Associated Press,
once ranked “Pope John Paul II — for engineering the downfall of
Communism, promoting free institutions and defending the church’s
traditional teachings — as the 20th century’s greatest leader with
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.”
Egads! Run for the hills, Californians.
The fanaticism in this race belongs not to Simon, but to the
“liberal-minded” media taunting him.
