Redstate

By Martin A. Knight Comments (12) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

We have seen this time and time again.

Jim Geraghty's latest over at NRO quotes his 'long time sage source and mentor', a guy he calls 'Obi-Wan Kenobi':

At some point, some Republican is going to come out and say, "Hey. We’ve seen this show before, every cycle for the past couple of cycles. Starting in September, there’s a bombshell every two or three days for the last six weeks of the campaign, from the AP, from the big three networks, from the New York Times and the Post and Bob Woodward, and it’s always in one direction. It’s always a bombshell of bad news for the Republicans."

Jed Babbin has been sounding this drum since August.

Just a few days before the 2000 presidential election, the media gifted us with the Bush drunk driving story, dredged up from 1976. That didn't damage Mr. Bush sufficiently, so in the 2004 campaign the 527 Media first tried and failed with the forged Texas Air National Guard documents and then - in the last week -- jumped on the phony UN story about hundreds of tons of missing explosives in Iraq. That one might have sunk Mr. Bush but for the fact that the Pentagon got lucky, both finding the people who knew the truth and getting them in front of a tv camera before election day.

This year, polls show Democrats aren't doing as well as they'd thought on key issues such as winning in Iraq, homeland vulnerability to terrorist attack and the need to keep the economic boom going. To counter their structural weaknesses, as I predicted in this space since August, the 527 Media - the NYT, WaPo, CBS, NBC, ABC -- are producing "October surprises" at a tremendous pace. So far we've seen them make a major story of the Senate Democrats' attempt to revive the discredited "revolt of the generals" followed quickly by the leaked National Intelligence Estimate and then the new Bob Woodward book, "State of Denial."

Before this year, the media would take the trouble to deny that they timed their stories to do damage to a Republican candidate. Even that pretense has been abandoned this year. The timing of the Revolting Generals, Part III was obvious: it was a foundation for Woodward's book release. But Woodward's book itself? The proof that the book's purpose, and the timing of the release, is to influence the 2006 election comes from Woodward's own words.

As reported in the October 2 Editor and Publisher, NBC's Matt Lauer asked Woodward why he held such an important story - i.e., his alleged proofs that the Bush administration was lying to the American people about the Iraq war - instead of taking the WaPo front page with it? E & P reports: "Woodward replied that he had not waited "to make a splash, but to assemble the whole story," and then go to the White House and Pentagon and CIA and ask, "What did you do?" He added: "Simon & Schuster and my bosses at the Washington Post said the only real obligation here is to tell it before the election." (emphasis added). At least Woodward is honest about his motivation. If only his editors, and those of the other 527 Media were as forthright.

Now we have the carefully-timed "breaking news" of Cong. Mark Foley's salacious e-mails and "instant messages" with a house page. The St. Petersburg Times and the Miami Herald received the e-mails between Foley and the page, in the case of the Times as early as last November. Neither published the story until ABC did. How long did ABC have them, as well as the actually incriminating "instant messages"? The media are not conspiring to hold the stories. Never forget: it's a media culture, not a conspiracy.

We need to do something about the Press.

I know that the vast majority here thinks it's better, it's safer, for us to sit back and wait for them to implode. That's great ... if we only operate in the long term!

But what about the near-term? What about the constant use of the malfeasance of a single Republican to smear the entire party when that never happens with Democrats?

Are we supposed to just sit and watch these people aid and abet in the slandering of the reputations of good men and women whose only crime is to be nominated by a Republican President? Are we supposed to just twiddle our thumbs while they continue to break the law and publish national security information simply to undermine the Administration?

How many more times are we supposed to sit back and watch them allow Democrats to say one thing today, say something completely contradictory tomorrow and not be called on it? How many more times are we supposed to endure their uncritical repetition of unsupported Democrat allegations of impropriety at Republicans?

Can you imagine a Republican remaining in Congress with the full support of his party if that Republican had been caught with $90,000 of bribe money in his freezer without him and his party being constantly crucified by the Press?

What about the war? We all know that if there was a lesson learned by America's military leaders from Vietnam it is that the loss of popular support for the mission at home is the only way they can lose. What are they seeing now? How many of them can in good conscience order men to put their lives at risk all for a mission they do not believe they would be allowed to complete?

I confess. I'm tired of this.

Worse, I'm tired of the defeatist fatalism that has infected the Republican rank and file when it comes to the Press. We cannot fight or challenge them directly and in the public eye. All we are supposed to do is concentrate on are blogs that barely 1% of CBS's nightly audience reads.

We are just supposed to fold our hands and hope and pray they lose what's left of their credibility before we're slaughted on election day.

I give up.