Mickey Kaus blogs for Slate.com:
Howie Kurtz goes to bat against Romney’s anti-McCain ad with a defense that’s much more misleading than any ad I’ve seen:
Romney’s description of McCain’s failed immigration bill — which was backed by President Bush — is so selective as to be misleading. The measure would have allowed illegal immigrants to seek legal status only if they first returned to their country of origin and paid a fine, and it was coupled with stricter border enforcement — key elements omitted by the ad. Romney called a similar bipartisan effort "reasonable" in 2006. It is not true that McCain backed Social Security for illegals; a Senate amendment would have allowed payment of past benefits only after immigrants obtained legal status. [E.A.]
The provision requiring a return "to their country of origin"–the so-called "touchback" plan–was in fact not part of the reform that McCain has righteously championed for years. It was added at the last minute, as the bill was sliding down the tubes, in a desperate attempt to attract conservative votes. (The bill failed anyway two days later.) The provision was also a fraud, but that’s almost beside the point. …
Why don’t reporters like WaPo‘s Kurtz** and NYT‘s Santora stop pretending they are enforcing truth or fairness and just face the perhaps-subconscious motive that’s evident to nearly everyone: They liked McCain’s failed immigration reform, or they like McCain, or they like their own acceptance into the comfortable bipartisan "comprehensive" consensus, and they instinctively for the ways to defend him against what they assume must be crude, yahooesque attacks from the right?
Is Gen. Petraeus Killing Kos? Even though there’s a big election on, Daily Kos traffic peaked in August, and has been trending down ever since, according to this forthright Onemadson post (noted by Geraghty and Instapundit). … Hmm. I don’t think the cause is "candidate wars." I was at a very nice left-wing party over the holidays and the youthful antiwar types were saying that traffic was down on all the left-wing sites because of … Iraq. … That’s not what I said. It’s what they said. … Iraq just isn’t as salient now that it doesn’t seem to be spiraling into apocalypse. … P.S.: Was the left-wing blogosphere always mainly about Iraq? … P.P.S.: Of course, some right-wing sites seem to be experiencing a mild decline since August also. Maybe the whole blogosphere was about Iraq!
