WaPo Hires a Conservative Blogger; Unhinged Left Goes Nuts
MARCH 24 UPDATE: Domenech Must Go
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“Pachyderms in the Mist: Red America and the MSM” is the opening blog entry of Ben Domenech, and it is an in-your-face wonder to behold:
This is a blog for the majority of Americans.
Since the election of 1992, the extreme political left has fought a losing battle. Their views on the economy, marriage, abortion, guns, the death penalty, health care, welfare, taxes, and a dozen other major domestic policy issues have been exposed as unpopular, unmarketable and unquestioned losers at the ballot box.
Democrats who have won major elections since 1992 have, with very few exceptions, been the ones who distanced themselves from the shrieking denizens of their increasingly extreme base, soft-pedaled their positions on divisive issues and adopted the rhetoric and positions of the right — pro-free market, pro-business, pro-faith, tough on crime and strongly in favor of family values.
Yet even in a climate where Republicans hold command of every branch of government, and advocate views shared by a majority of voters, the mainstream media continues to treat red state Americans as pachyderms in the mist - an alien and off-kilter group of suburbanite churchgoers about which little is known, and whose natural habitat is a discomforting place for even the most hardened reporter from the New York Times.
It gets better from there, and takes no prisoners — Washington’s go-along get-along Republicans who have sold out their party’s core principles get an equal-opportunity tongue-lashing from Domenech:
On issue after issue, Republicans have given in to the wisdom of the MSM and the beltway talking heads instead of listening to their constituents and the conservative political base. On the size of government, on immigration and on issues of federal power, Republicans have adopted the same Washington strategies that doomed the Democrats in the 1994 cycle…..
His boss is The Washington Post. I said the Post, not the Washington Times.
Liberals are not pleased. David Brock whines at Media Matters.org: “When can we expect the Post to hire a partisan Democratic activist as a blogger to balance Domenech?” (Why do you need to? There are already hundreds in the newsroom. — Ed.) Greg Sargent at The American Prospect also seems to think The Post has no liberal blog representation, as if Dan Froomkin plays it down the center (from his post today about President Bush’s Cleveland speech — “Bush tried to explain. But in the end, what he provided was yet another example of what others see — and he doesn’t. That would be reality.” Oh yeah, no partisanship there.).
But here’s the howler of the day — Chris “I’m Incredibly Full of Myself” Bowers at MyDD, thinks the independent right-wing blogosphere is dead (”There Is No Right-Wing Blogosphere Anymore”):
I still believe this, only now I feel it has developed to such a degree that the right-wing blogosphere itself has been all but annihilated. Most major right-wing bloggers have now been incorporated into the established news media apparatus.
Two thoughts:
- Ask Paul Hackett how dead we are (yeah, we had help, but it all started with local blogs; besides, Rush is a five-days-per-week blogger who just happens to have a radio show. :–>).
- The Washington Post Company is surely tired of stock charts that look like this:
Oh, and Mr. Domenech, consider yourself blogrolled.
