The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson: so on the cutting edge of journalism that he’s writing from 60 days into the future! Or as Ace writes, “OMG: ‘Temper Tantrum’ Makes First Appearance In Media, Two Months Out From Election:”
In 1994, Peter Jennings at least had the decency to wait until his boys lost to announce “tonight, the nation threw a temper-tantrum.”
Bernie Goldberg was noting this on O’Reilly last week — this time, they’re not even waiting. They can see it coming, so they’re getting out their recriminations over their rejection early. Precriminations for prejection, I guess.
I linked Eugene “I have no obvious qualifications” Robinson’s headline earlier, but I must link it again, now that Matt Lewis informs me he is so fucking stupid he trotted out Peter Jennings’ infamous line, without even being knowing enough to realize what he was doing.
Voters appear to be so fed up with the Democrats that they’re ready to toss them out in favor of the Republicans — for whom, according to those same polls, the nation has even greater contempt. This isn’t an “electoral wave,” it’s a temper tantrum…. In the punditry business, it’s considered bad form to question the essential wisdom of the American people. But at this point, it’s impossible to ignore the obvious: The American people are acting like a bunch of spoiled brats.
Matt Lewis notes:
Robinson stresses that his argument is not a “partisan” one, but one can’t help but notice the convenient timing: Now that voters are swinging to the Republicans, they are throwing a “temper tantrum.” (One wonders whether they were throwing a similar tantrum when they got fed up with Bush and voted-in Barack Obama?) …
Meanwhile, Peggy Noonan asks, “How Do You Stop an Elephant Charging?”
Eight weeks out and you don’t have to be a political professional to feel what’s in the air: The Republicans have a big win coming.
The question in the House races is: Will they get to 218? Will Republicans pick up the 39 seats they need to win control of the 435-member chamber?
Another way of asking: Is this 1994 again?
That year the Republicans swept the House races, picking up 52 seats and getting, for the first time in 40 years, a Republican majority and a Republican speaker, Newt Gingrich. Even then-Speaker Tom Foley (D., Wash.), lost his seat that year. (Speaker Nancy Pelosi is famously in no danger—she won her seat with 72 % of the vote in 2008—but it probably means something that she appears to have gone missing from the national scene. CBS, in March, had her at 11% approval among registered voters.)
A Gallup survey of registered voters this week had Republicans beating Democrats in a generic ballot by 10 points, 51% to 41%. In the 68-year history of that poll, the GOP had never led by more than five points. RealClearPolitics has Republicans ahead in 206 races and Democrats ahead in 194, with 35 too close to call. The Cook Political Report puts 68 Democratic House seats “at substantial risk,” while judging less than a dozen GOP seats to be in real trouble. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs made news a few weeks ago by conceding the obvious: that the Republicans could take the House. Top Democrats have told the same to Politico.
The news is so good it’s prompting mutterings on the right: The liberal media are trumpeting the inevitable GOP triumph to make the base complacent and the party peak early. Anything but a Democratic debacle will be spun as proof that Obama’s support, while soft, endures. “The Republicans had a typical off-year chance to win back power and failed. The reason? Voters just don’t trust them.”
I think Noonan is spot-on that “The liberal media are trumpeting the inevitable GOP triumph to make the base complacent and the party peak early.” And obviously, complacency is something to be avoided this fall, for numerous reasons. But is the incredibly bitter and divisive “blame the readers” style the MSM has adopted, as illustrated in the Robinson quote above, from an article astonishingly titled “The Spoiled-Brat American Electorate,” a byproduct of their going all-in to help the Democrats?
The MSM’s roomtone these days is very much the mirror image of the material the JournoList-tainted media cranked out in from the summer of 2008 through early 2009, when they were trumpeting an inexperienced presidential candidate as literally the second coming of some of the most revered and battle-tested presidents in American history. (When they weren’t comparing him to God.) But no matter what happens in November at the ballot box, what happens to the MSM afterwards, when these publications have to go back to their readers for subscriptions and advertising revenue?
Will their readers forget how badly they’ve been dumped on in recent weeks?
Related: While one journalist with the WaPo is trashing the voters, another is attacking the founding fathers. Red State spots JournoList founder Ezra Klein saying:
I think our veneration for the Founders is something that occasionally perplexes me.
Go figure. Personally, I like to think that the founding fathers are, at their best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.
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