Bill Simon’s low-key gubernatorial campaign is unnerving some
California journalists. What are biased liberal journalists
supposed to do when the Republican candidate is temperate and
uncontroversial?
This is a real drag for reporters whose raison d’être is
nailing Republicans. But liberals at the San Francisco
Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News remain undaunted.
Experts at shoehorning smears into their stories and calling them
“news,” they rolled out two guilt-by-association pieces about Simon
this last weekend.
Laura Kurtzman of the Mercury News discovered through
intense investigative work that Bill Simon is “anti-abortion” and
gives money to homeless pregnant women in distress. And that’s not
all: it turns out that members of this organization called “Good
Counsel” also oppose abortion, and know other people who oppose
abortion too.
You see, the really important story is not that Bill Simon gives
money to the disadvantaged — so what if Good Counsel helps 4,000
women before and after pregnancy? — but that he is linked to
pro-lifers that reporters like Kurtzman find “extreme.” It really
bothers Kurtzman that Good Counsel’s web page “links to groups that
espouse radical anti-abortion views.” What does this have to do
with Simon? Was he the Webmaster? No, it has nothing to do with
him. But why not throw it in anyway? Any stick will do on a
pro-life Republican.
Kurtzman reports innocently that “Simon’s opposition to abortion
will almost certainly play a pivotal role in the fall campaign.” Oh
really? Might that have something to do with your partisan,
pro-abortion reporting? Liberal reporters are like people who cause
car crashes, then join the gawking scene to wonder “what
happened.”
Left up to the California people, the abortion issue will play
no role in the fall campaign. But the people don’t decide campaign
issues; the left-wing media do. The above sentence should read:
“Because of the pro-abortion California media, abortion will almost
certainly play a pivotal role in the fall campaign.”
Kurtzman writes that since “winning the primary, Simon has tried
to broaden his appeal to voters — two-thirds of whom support
abortion rights — by softening his abortion stance.” Is this a
fact? No, it is an impression and a wrong one. How can you soften a
position that was never hard to begin with? Simon never spoke of
abortion in the primary except when reporters backed him into
it.
Kurtzman’s big scoop that Simon “has ties to foes of abortion”
may have been eclipsed by the San Francisco Chronicle’s
amazing discovery that Simon talked to religious Republicans during
the primary. Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Carla
Marinucci find it newsworthy to report now that Simon “wooed voters
of the state’s religious right” during the primary. The shocking
smoking gun? He once did an interview on the Trinity Broadcast
Network in Orange County: “Videotapes of Simon’s appearance —
which went uncovered by the news media during the primary election
— and other TBN broadcasts were obtained by the Chronicle and KTVU
Channel 2.”
Wow. What a scoop. Did Simon say anything over-the-top in the
interview? Oh no, but that’s not the point: he associated with
undesirables, reports the Chronicle. And to prove it, they
quote a TBN critic, Hank Hanegraaf, saying that the network is on
the “lunatic fringe.”
Attacking Republicans through their associations, no matter how
far-fetched, is the Chronicle’s forte. The paper will
resort to the most childish gotcha journalism against any
Republican even vaguely pro-life. The deception it deploys borders
on satire. In this most recent
Simon-is-a-creature-of-the-Christian-Right story, it tosses in this
tangential fact: “He also hired political director Steve Frank, who
has worked closely with the religious right on issues ranging from
support of school vouchers to opposing abortion.” What the
Chronicle doesn’t report is Frank’s religion — Judaism.
Though the Chronicle knows this fact, it doesn’t report
it, lest the smear lose its sting.
Meanwhile, Simon, even as he gets hit with faked-up stories,
continues to lead in the polls. Liberal Chronicle
columnists Philip Matier and Andrew Ross reported on Monday that
Democrats in Sacramento recently conducted a statewide poll that
found that Californians “weren’t too happy about the state’s chief
engineer,” with “58 percent giving Gov. Gray Davis a thumbs-down
for his job performance.”
They continue: “Even worse: When respondents were asked who they
would vote for if the election were held today, Davis lagged nine
points behind Republican challenger Bill Simon. The biggest spread
we’ve seen so far.”
Davis can’t close this gap. But you can count on the liberal
press to try and close it for him.
