More Washington Post Bias

Take a look at “No Key Issue in a House Divided,” an article in today’s Washington Post by Juliet Eilperin and David Von Drehle. Actually, “bias” may not be the right term to describe this article. “One-sided” or “half-truth” would be better.

The authors argue that House races across the country are being decided by local issues, not national themes, and that “[t]his has blurred the political landscape, complicating the Democratic goal of drawing sharp distinctions between the parties.” In their view, it is only Democrats who want to draw “sharp distinctions,” and it is wily, implicitly disingenuous Republicans who are blurring the distinctions by camouflaging their true selves in Democratic issues.

Republicans in tight House races are steering their well-funded efforts into advertising and direct-mail appeals on the very subjects Democrats generally like to emphasize.

Several Republican candidates are discussed who have distanced themselves from, for example, proposals to privatize part of Social Security and, presumably in an effort to make voters believe they support prescription drug relief, have endorsed the Republican plan. Imagine that! A Republican candidate actually endorsing a Republican proposal as though he really favored it! What’ll they stoop to next?

But forget deception and sincerity. There are indeed Republican candidates who have taken positions on what the article is pleased to call “traditionally Democratic issues” (how dare they!), and it is true that some have even taken positions on some of these issues that one associates with Democrats. The trouble with the article is not that what it says is false; the trouble is what it doesn’t say.

There is not one mention of a single Democratic candidate in the country running on “traditionally Republican issues,” such as support for the president’s policy toward Iraq, opposition to rolling back tax cuts, or guns, nor are any Republicans mentioned who are frustrated that their Democratic opponents have “blurred the political landscape,” in Eilperin’s and Von Drehle’s phrase, by feigning support for “their” issues.

They wouldn’t have had to look hard to find some. For example, there is this description of Jean Carnahan (D, Mo), who rarely if ever encountered a gun control measure she opposed, blasting away at a skeet range:

But in an election year, and in the very week when a new poll showed the Democrat’s support among men weakening, politics could be smelled along with the gunpowder.

Or from USA Today:

Democratic governors from the South aligned themselves Monday with Georgia Sen. Zell Miller’s call for Democrats to be more sympathetic and supportive of people who own guns….

Democrats have looked to Virginia Gov. Mark Warner’s campaign as a model of how to defuse the gun issue. Members of “Sportsmen for Warner” stressed his support for hunting across rural Virginia. This month, Warner signed a law overturning a Virginia city’s ban on concealed handguns in city buildings.

In another good example, Ipse Dixit links to Fox’s Tony Snow zinging Daschle for voting against Kyoto, the International Criminal Court, and for Bush’s Iraq resolution.

Luckily, readers of the WP don’t have to look hard either. All they need do is cast their eyes below the fold on the same page where the Eilperin/Von Drehle article appears to find this in an article on South Dakota by T.R. Reid:

While Janklow [Republican candidate for House] is famously blunt — he likes to remind voters that he changed the name of the state’s “correctional facility” to “prison” — Herseth [Democratic candidate for House] is constantly cautious, on guard against saying anything that might be construed as “liberal.”

“That’s not a term that is respected here,” she notes.

When a voter at a veterans’ hall lobbed an easy softball question at Herseth — “Would you repeal those tax cuts for billionaires so we can steer the money to veterans?” — she refused to take a swing. Rather, the candidate launched into a complex 14-minute response, noting that “I have to be careful when it comes to tax cuts.” She supports abortion rights, but doesn’t say that. Her standard response on the issue is “Like most people, I want to make it as rare as possible.”

The Eilperin/Von Drehle article is not wrong as far as it goes. It just doesn’t go very far, leaving it stuck in one-sided half-truths. Maybe the editors were out to lunch, again.