Who is....the Weakest Link?!
I watched some of the Democratic debate last night. Republicans can't stop channeling Reagan (*UPDATE* Obama was channeling him as well) and the Democrats can't stop campaigning against the Bush Administration. President Bush isn't running for office!!!!
Well, perhaps not in Michigan. Would a Fred Thompson win in South Carolina help the Giuliani campaign? So far, there is no clear front-runner. It's to Giuliani's advantage to keep it that way.
Candidate Mitt Romney smiles as he meets supporters at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Mich. on Tuesday. Romney, whose father was a two-term governor of Michigan, is expected to do well in his home state's primary.LM Otero - AP
Congratulations to Romney! If Fred Thompson wins South Carolina, and Giuliani Florida.....think of the possibilities!
Meanwhile, some in the media think the Republican coalition is "fractured", because we have no clear-cut front-runner.
I suppose if we were Democrats, we'd be hailed and celebrated for being a "big-tent" all-inclusive party with diversity of opinion and thought.
Labels: Election 2008, Mitt Romney, political cartoons
posted by The WordSmith from Nantucket at 1/15/2008 09:08:00 PM
10 Comments:
You are so right. If it were the left we have open minds, but look at the left now... If our frontrunners were a woman and a black man they would simply say the right is trying to play the woman and race cards.
Yeah, we would indeed catch hell from the media if we had either a black or a woman running, that's for sure!
I stayed awake to long last night. Was up to 3:00AM watching the political babble on television. I hated myself this morning when I got up at 7:00AM! I can never sleep later than that, no matter what time I turn in. It's been a lonnnggggggg day! I'm afraid when it comes time for the general election, I'll be up all night waiting for the results. Pray that I survive it. I'm no spring chicken, ya know!
The two comments are very silly. They suggest that conservatives are powerless victims of the proverbial "liberal" media. Clinton and Obama are marching in lockstep to the center of the political spectrum. Many of the same corporate powerbrokers are backing Clinton and Obama that are backing McCain, Romney and Guiliani.
Don't forget that newspapers, magazines and TV and radio stations are owned, mostly, by wealthy people and large corporations. Those that have the most exposure are owned by the wealthiest people and the largest corporations. Very few of them vote for Democrats, who are only a little less conservative than Republicans.
This is one of my favorite blogs, but it would be more enjoyable if posters would tone down their whining about the "liberal" media.
This is one of my favorite blogs, but it would be more enjoyable if posters would tone down their whining about the "liberal" media.
Thank you, rockybutte. I'm glad you're not afraid to step into the waters of a right-wing blog and leave comments for the amen chorus.
Whining about the vast media conspiracy is one of our favorite pastimes! We need something to feel persecuted about.
Regarding "wealthy people and corporations", I'll have to dig up a recent study somewhere that indicated many fat cats were donating to the Democratic Party. I should have taken a closer look at that, as I only skimmed it, meaning to come back to it, and never did.
I won't argue with you, though, on who owns media corporations. But what about the majority of journalists? Studies I've seen in the past seem to indicate that they lean left of center, and donate to the Democratic Party, heavily in comparison to the Republican Party.
Ah...I did save it to file: Democrats wake up to being the party of the rich.
Not completely on topic, but as an aside.
Of course, the link is to the partisan right-wing think tank, the Heritage Foundation.
Word:
Yes, there are many wealthy supporters of Democrats: the
"limousine liberals". Their number, I'm sure, is far less than the "cadillac conservatives".
As it turns out, I have quite a few friends in print journalism. My best and oldest friend has been an editor at the NY Times for 27 years. Before that, he worked at Newsday for 5 years. As you can imagine, we've had many discussions about the political biases of journalists (he's a Democrat, although a moderate).
He readily admits that the majority of reporters at the Times are liberal. Their most defining characteristic, however, is ambition. Both liberal and conservative reporters will report stories of a type and in a manner which will further their own careers. They will avoid reporting stories if their bosses and, indirectly, the paper's advertisers insist.
Another friend reported for Newsday for more than 10 years. He was assigned to the Shoreham (unpopular nuclear power plant) story, but was taken off of it when the utility that owned it put pressure on his boss. "You don't get it, do you?" John's boss said to him when he finally removed him from the story.
I read a story a few years ago that claimed that a relatively slim majority of reporters considered themselves liberal. The same study broke down their political leanings in several categories. They were most liberal in the areas of public corruption and race relations, if I recall. They were most conservative when it came to taxes.
Liberal and conservative reporters alike feasted on the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal. A decade later, many are bothering to report on Paris, Lindsay, Brittany, OJ, Brangela and the like. Many are waiting for Jacko to do something really weird.
Newspapers live and die with advertising. My friend at the Times jokes that if you took away advertising from the Sunday edition, you could slide what's left under any door.
I don't want to get into TV & radio at this point. Back to work.
Interesting perspective, rockybutte. Thanks for taking the time to comment. A lot of what you wrote sounds very reasonable and true.
I read a story a few years ago that claimed that a relatively slim majority of reporters considered themselves liberal.
I think I might have seen the same thing. Was it a Pew study? It was either that one, or perhaps a different one, that also indicated that their voting patterns, even though they didn't consider themselves liberal, was still to the left.
Maybe this article references the study? Of course, Townhall is a conservative site.
I've sometimes wondered if liberals sometimes don't see that papers are biased in their favor (like the NYTimes and LATimes) because to some of them, their news reports reflects their own beliefs/perspective. To the fringe left, they don't go far enough to the left, and so the DUers and KosKiddies think the mainstream mainly leans to the right.
Somehow, comments I made this AM were not published.
Follow this link: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2447
The study is 10 years old, but Pew is part of it. It was commissioned by FAIR and took part at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Thanks for the link, rockybutte.
Hmm...the study looks interesting, and I'll have to examine it further.
But FAIR rang a bell in my head, and I remember it being used to debunk John Stossel's claims on 17,000-18,000 scientists signing a petition against the global warming scare. I accepted that. Many of those petition signers were not experts in fields related to climate change, but scientists in unrelated matters. But then my buddy Curt looked deeper than FAIR did, and pointed out that a substantial number of them still were experts in areas that involve the study of climate change (still outnumbering a counter stat number on the amount of scientists who believed in the dangers of global warming).
Anyway, I am just suspicious of the "non-partisan" nature of the site (a Noam Chomsky ad also runs on the page).
Does not mean I discount a study, simply because it comes from a liberal source- best way to scrutinize the validity of your own claims. But it does make me wonder if they are seeing things through partisan lenses.
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