Okay, so observing that Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell is a GOP shill is sooo earlier this week, and bitching about the right-wing bias of the So Called Liberal Media is tiresome, outdated, shrill and unimaginative. But I’m not feeling very well, I haven’t been sleeping right these past few days, and I have a party for a bad movie screening breathing down my neck (don’t ask). So I’m going to go ahead and take a swipe at a WaPo article from this morning, that takes an approach to the Abramoff scandals that I at least haven’t seen before: the public doesn’t give a damn!
What drives the article into the shitcan isn’t that fails to document any of the outrage over the GOP corruption, but that it tries to extrapolate from the lack of a strong Republican grassroots campaign to reform the party, that there is a general lack of interest among the American people. The polls the article trots forth show nothing of the sort (in fairness, they don’t disprove it) – the only number the article quotes suggests only that corruption is seen as a bipartisan problem which a) it is, and b) reflects the coverage of such media outlets as the Washington Post that Abramoff poured money into both parties (happily, that obnoxious talking point is nowhere to be found in the current article).
Basically, the article’s fallacy is to presume that the lack of grassroots outrage signifies a general lack of interest in the story. Then it states that “Other polls show Democrats with a significant edge when voters are asked about who they want elected to the House.” So perhaps the reason there’s no GOP reform campaign is because Republicans are switching parties? Just a thought.