{"id":1841,"date":"2007-12-30T10:06:07","date_gmt":"2007-12-30T16:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=1841"},"modified":"2007-12-30T10:07:03","modified_gmt":"2007-12-30T16:55:03","slug":"does-msm-mean-media-saves-mccain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=1841","title":{"rendered":"Does MSM mean &#8220;Media Saves McCain&#8221;?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2180876\">Mickey Kaus blogs for Slate.com<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>Howie Kurtz <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.washingtonpost.com\/the-trail\/2007\/12\/28\/romney_rips_mccain_on_senate_r.html\" target=\"_blank\">goes to bat<\/a> against Romney&#8217;s anti-McCain ad with a defense that&#8217;s much more misleading than any ad I&#8217;ve seen:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Romney&#8217;s description of McCain&#8217;s failed immigration bill &#8212; which was backed by President Bush &#8212; is so selective as to be misleading. <strong>The measure would have allowed illegal immigrants to seek legal status only if they first returned to their country of origin <\/strong>and paid a fine, and it was coupled with stricter border enforcement &#8212; key elements omitted by the ad. Romney called a similar bipartisan effort &quot;reasonable&quot; 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.]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The provision requiring a return &quot;to their country of origin&quot;&#8211;the so-called &quot;touchback&quot; plan&#8211;<strong>was in fact not part of the reform that McCain has righteously championed for years.<\/strong> It was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2169114\/#touchbackadd\" target=\"_blank\">added at the last minute<\/a>, 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 <a href=\"http:\/\/article.nationalreview.com\/?q=OTA4YzY0Nzk2ZDM3YThmYTRhYzJhY2I1NjFlY2NkYmQ=\" target=\"_blank\">was also a fraud<\/a>, but that&#8217;s almost beside the point. &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Why don&#8217;t reporters like <em>WaPo<\/em>&#8216;s Kurtz** and <em>NYT<\/em>&#8216;s Santora stop pretending they are enforcing truth or fairness and just <strong>face the perhaps-subconscious motive that&#8217;s evident to nearly everyone<\/strong>: They liked McCain&#8217;s failed immigration reform, or they like McCain, or they like their own acceptance into the comfortable bipartisan &quot;comprehensive&quot; consensus, and they instinctively for the ways to defend him against what they assume must be crude, yahooesque attacks from the right?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Is Gen. Petraeus Killing Kos<\/strong>? Even though there&#8217;s a big election on, <em>Daily Kos<\/em> traffic peaked in August, and has been trending down ever since, according to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2007\/12\/28\/9473\/1605\/1011\/427140\" target=\"_blank\">this forthright Onemadson post<\/a> (noted by <a href=\"http:\/\/campaignspot.nationalreview.com\/post\/?q=NGNhY2Y2Y2I5OGM5ZDQ4MTNjOWY3NTg3MjQ5OWM5Yjg=\" target=\"_blank\">Geraghty<\/a> and <em><a href=\"http:\/\/instapundit.com\/archives2\/013454.php\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Instapundit<\/em><\/a><\/em>). &#8230; Hmm. I don&#8217;t think the cause is &quot;candidate wars.&quot; 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 &#8230; Iraq. &#8230; That&#8217;s not what I said. It&#8217;s what they said. &#8230; Iraq just isn&#8217;t as salient now that it doesn&#8217;t seem to be spiraling into apocalypse. &#8230; <strong>P.S.: <\/strong>Was the left-wing blogosphere always mainly about Iraq? &#8230; <strong>P.P.S.:<\/strong> Of course, some <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alexa.com\/data\/details\/traffic_details\/corner.nationalreview.com\" target=\"_blank\">right-wing<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alexa.com\/data\/details\/traffic_details\/powerlineblog.com\" target=\"_blank\">sites<\/a> seem to be experiencing a mild decline since August also. Maybe the whole blogosphere was about Iraq!<\/p>\n<p><!--adsense--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mickey Kaus blogs for Slate.com: Howie Kurtz goes to bat against Romney&#8217;s anti-McCain ad with a defense that&#8217;s much more misleading than any ad I&#8217;ve seen: Romney&#8217;s description of McCain&#8217;s failed immigration bill &#8212; which was backed by President Bush &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=1841\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mickey-kaus"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1841\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}