The Washington Times

The Washington Times takes a look at the Hillary campaign's strategy for dealing with the media, and ends up reinforcing the conventional wisdom that the Democratic frontrunner seeks to tightly control her message and keep the press at arm's length. We know -- shocker.

Surprisingly, the story doesn't mention the episode that's become the locus classicus of the Hillary-vs-the-media storyline: when, as The Politico first reported, her camp got GQ to spike an unflattering story about the inner workings of the campaign.

The paper says it requested a list of press availabilities from Hillary's campaign, but never received one.

UPDATE:  As we should have mentioned, The Observer planted its flag on this same turf almost ten months ago.  The spate of recent stories echoing the point kind of makes us wonder: Hasn't anything changed since then?

The Washington Times, which mounts even less of an effort to mask its partisan leanings than the Fox News Channel, is an occasional source of amusement with its breathless adherence to the GOP message machine. Like this morning's if-we-keep-repeating-it-maybe-we-can-make-it-so headline and story: Kerry gaffe loses independents for his party

Here's the problem with this story, a one-note GOP talking point turgidly dressed up as a formal unveiling of news:

First, it is written off of a Pew survey that has the distinct look of an outlier - easily the closest (i.e. most GOP-friendly) generic ballot poll available on the market. To mention, for instance, that a Gallup poll (also conducted post-Kerry) actually has the Democrats ahead by 20 points would undercut the already flimsy legs of this story.

But that's not all.

From the Pew poll, one statistic of nebulous value is then- that 18 percent of independent voters had "serious doubts" about voting Democratic because of Kerry - and the story then proceeds to beat us over the head with its earth-shattering relevance, cluing in the brain dead among us that independents "are considered pivotal in today's congressional elections."

In a related development, it is considered likely that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow morning before setting, sometime later in the day, in the west.

The statistic about independents tells us little because - much in the way prosecutors are supposedly able to get juries to indict ham sandwiches - pollsters can always find 18 percent of independents troubled by just about any development in any campaign. And, if you read the fine print in the Pew poll itself (which the Times, of course, ignores) you will see that the 18 percent figure includes anyone who said the Kerry comment raised only "a little" doubt about his or her willingness to vote for the Democrats.

But a good Washington Times political story is never about facts or details. It's about a headline that hews to the GOP's message of the day, which in the run-up to the Election has been that Republicans are surging thanks to last-minute doubts about the Democrats. Hence the Times' assertion that this data - one broadly-worded question from one of the 62,000 or so polls now in circulation" - represents "a potentially significant shift of 'voting intentions' and raising speculation of further erosion among independents for the Democrats." Oh, and bonus points for tying it all to Kerry, a top-5 GOP bogeyman.

Also,

Hey, if it's in the paper, it must be true.

All of this makes us wonder how the paper will handle what will probably be very bad news for the GOP today. Suppose the Democrats win, say, 35 seats in the House and take back the Senate - essentially the doomsday scenario for the GOP. What will the headline read on tomorrow's Washington Times front page? Some suggestions:

Lugar, Hatch cruise in Indiana and Utah; Hastert easily re-elected to Illinois seat

or maybe:

Democrats take control of Congress - Pelosi yet to rule changing flag design to hammer and sickle.

The Washington Times, which mounts even less of an effort to mask its partisan leanings than the Fox News Channel, is an occasional source of amusement with its breathless adherence to the GOP message machine. Like this morning's if-we-keep-repeating-it-maybe-we-can-make-it-so headline: Kerry gaffe loses independents for his party

It makes us wonder how the paper will handle what will probably be very bad news for the GOP today. Suppose the Democrats win, say, 35 seats in the House and take back the Senate - essentially the doomsday scenario for the GOP. What will the headline read on tomorrow's Washington Times front page? Some suggestions:

Lugar, Hatch cruise in Indiana and Utah; Hastert easily re-elected to Illinois seat

or maybe:

Democrats take control of Congress - Pelosi yet to rule changing flag design to hammer and sickle.

How high is the Foley scandal reaching? The Washington Times , usually a safe haven for all things conservative, has a not-so-subtle editorial saying Dennis Hastert should resign as Speaker of the House.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert must do the only right thing, and resign his speakership at once. Either he was grossly negligent for not taking the red flags fully into account and ordering a swift investigation, for not even remembering the order of events leading up to last week's revelations -- or he deliberately looked the other way in hopes that a brewing scandal would simply blow away. He gave phony answers Friday to the old and ever-relevant questions of what did he know and when did he know it? Mr. Hastert has forfeited the confidence of the public and his party, and he cannot preside over the necessary coming investigation, an investigation that must examine his own inept performance. A special, one-day congressional session should elect a successor. We nominate Rep. Henry Hyde, also of Illinois,

I wonder what the city's only Republican congressman, Vito Fossella of the 13th District, thinks Hastert should stay or go? I'll ask him...when I get him on the phone for that interview.  read more »

-- Azi Paybarah

No less authority than the Washington Times reports today that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is "more conservative than President Bush" on immigration.

This analysis is encumbered by few actual details of where she stands, but it does have this quote, apparently from a 2003 WABC Radio interview with John Gambling:

"I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants."

If the Times has this right -- and that's always a big if -- this is a model of, well, Clintonian positioning. It's something we've been seeing for a while from New York's ambitious junior Senator. And there does seem to be some conservative buzz to support the argument.

The Times quotes from a piece on the conservative website NewsMax.com.

"More than any other leader of either political party, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton has been focusing on immigration reform and border security — taking hard-line positions that appeal to frustrated Republicans in a move that could guarantee her enough support in red states to win the White House in 2008." (The full NewsMax piece, I hate to admit, is worth reading.)  read more »

The Times also has a spokesman for Rep. Tom Tancredo, leader of the immigration-restriction crowd, saying mildly positive things about Clinton.

Among the many problems facing the Democratic Party, according to former Vice President Al Gore, is  read more »

Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative , by David Brock.  read more »