Folks in the media and America in general seem confused lately.
Some of the confusion stems from the Iraq War and some from recent
polling in the 2008 presidential contest. Many polls are showing a
rise in the fortunes of Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton, while
their main opponents, Rudy Giuliani and Barrack Obama seem to be
fading a bit. How could this happen?
The liberal media are particularly perplexed at reports of Romney gaining ground. After all, he is a
Mormon and so to them he is even more freakish than the
run-of-the-mill religious fanatics who inhabit Middle America. And,
as they never tire of pointing out, he’s a notorious flip-flopper,
a trait that has been historically repulsive to liberals since at
least, yesterday.
Even more confounding to the left is the loss of support
Giuliani has experienced among conservatives. You can almost hear
them: What’s not to like about Rudy? He’s pro-abortion, anti-guns
and generally in approval of special rights for alternative
life-styles. What are these people thinking?
In the Bizarro world of the liberal media, where they believe
they can select the opposition candidate (see John McCain in 2000),
the growing conservative repudiation of Rudy is bewildering. They
can’t comprehend that, at least until Fred Thompson or Newt
Gingrich joins in the fun, Romney is arguably the most conservative
of the top tier candidates.
And a big reason for Romney’s elevation in conservative eyes is
that he’s beginning to show an inclination to reach across the
campaign trail with gusto to take on the leading Democrats.
Criticizing them for voting against funding our troops in Iraq, he
singled out Clinton and Obama:
At a time when the men and women of our military
fighting terrorism around the globe needed them most, Senators
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama cast a vote that singularly
defines their lack of leadership….Voting against our troops
during a time of war shows the American people that the leaders of
the Democrat Party will abandon principle in favor of political
positioning. Their votes render them undependable in the eyes of
the men and women of the United States military and the American
people.
This is the sort of red meat that has many on the right drooling.
But don’t expect Romney’s name to appear in many news pieces that
don’t have the words “Mormon” or “religion” in them. The liberal
media, as always, have little interest in stories such as the
above, that don’t have their best interests at heart; especially
those involving Mrs. Clinton.
Speaking of which, it’s been reported ad nauseam that both
leading Democratic contenders voted against the Iraq War Funding
bill. But in denying support for the troops they both claim to
“support,” the media has ignored that in doing so, they also voted
down a minimum-wage increase and further funding for Hurricane
Katrina recovery that were piggy-backed onto the bill. One wonders
what the reportage would have been had Obama alone taken this
stand.
In a related tale of the media ignoring stories that do not
advance their agenda, Cindy Sheehan, the mother of the anti-war
movement, has announced that she is leaving the Democratic Party
and resigning as the “face” of the movement itself. It seems she
feels used and abused by her former enablers.
As pointed out by our friends at Newsbusters.org, all of this is of no interest to the
media since Ms. Sheehan’s antics failed to help them gain the
ouster of President Bush, and worse, she is now focusing her
strident criticism on them. Proving that even a broken clock is
right twice a day, the Peace Mom concluded that
…I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I
limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican
Party….However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to
the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my
cause started to erode and the “left” started labeling me with the
same slurs that the right used.
Of course the most under-reported stories continue to be those that
remotely suggest the surge in Iraq may be showing positive results;
a notable exception being Joe Klein’s
piece in
Time, “Is al-Qaeda on the Run
in Iraq?” It is a minor miracle indeed that a major news outlet
admits that al Qaeda is even in Iraq, let alone that they may be
“on the run.”
Should the impossible happen and the rest of the media decide to
lift the veil from their own eyes and thus from the hapless
Americans still bound by their power, military matters might become
more clear to them. And, a few months down the road, they will
discover that the Republican primary will come down to a contest
between Romney and Thompson. And although that will gladden the
hearts of true conservatives, it will be an unhappy awakening for
the media.
