Yahoos Within the GOP Coalition Challenged on their Media Think

[marmar]

from HuffPost:




Jay Rosen
Yahoos Within the GOP Coalition Challenged on their Media Think
Posted December 29, 2007 | 02:37 AM (EST)



If you've been paying attention you know that Mike Huckabee's rise is bringing out the contempt for social conservatives and evangelicals among the conservative elite and its ecosphere, as Mark Ambinder calls it. John Cole ("Enjoy your new GOP, folks...") and Andrew Sullivan ("This is their party. And they asked for every last bit of it...") pounced on the squirming shown as Huckabee climbed in the polls during December. Arianna has written about the reaping and sowing. Steve Benen and Kevin Drum too.

Watching this pattern, The Atlantic's Ross Douthat defined Huckenfreude as "pleasure derived from the outrage of prominent conservative pundits over the rising poll numbers of Mike Huckabee." (And "Huckenfreude" is fun to say.) Some particularly good examples of that outrage are Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal and Rich Lowry in the National Review. But also see James Joyner.

"For the purpose of bringing down the Bush administration."

I would like to report on a different--and perhaps subtler--instance of this same contempt by conservative elites for yahoos in their own coalition. My case involves not the views of Republican candidates but attitudes toward the press.

Some of the attitudes I have in mind were well expressed by John Hinderaker of the conservative blog Powerline in December of 2005. I think it is accurate to call this a political passion among a portion of the Republican coalition: the new media right, or that part of the base that has its own microphone. The context was this article in the Washington Post featuring military blogger Bill Roggio that badly mangled some key facts about him. Good, solid flashpoint material...

The Post's reporters are part of a lavishly funded and monolithic media effort to misreport the Iraq war for the purpose of bringing down the Bush administration. Notwithstanding their near monopoly, the liberal media's reporting is so patently biased and inaccurate that the mere presence of a reporter on the scene who is not part of their guild, and does not share their commitment to the well-being of the Democratic Party, sends them into a panic. Pathetic.

The virtues of direct speech: The press is monolithic, liberal, dedicated to bringing down Bush, and committed to the well-being of the Democratic Party. Hinderaker in 2006: "The liberal media are determined to drag the carcass of the Democratic Party across the finish line, come Hell or high water." ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-rosen/yahoos-within-the-gop-coa_b_78654.html