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Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."
-- Daniel Webster
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Saturday, September 22, 2012 :::
Today, the Washington Post says that Mitt Romney “had the worst week in Washington.” Why, pray tell, did Romney have a worse week than President Obama, whose Department of Justice was implicated in the Fast and Furious scandal and coverup, and was linked to far-left Media Matters in targeting conservative commentators; whose Secretary of Health and Human Services was ensnared in a Hatch Act violation; whose Secretary of State was embroiled in controversy about a cover-up over the murder of our ambassador to Libya; who was himself enmeshed in controversy about snubbing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to tweet pictures with pirates and hang with David Letterman; who spent the week bashing a YouTube filmmaker and cutting ads apologizing for the First Amendment to Pakistani Islamists; whose economic news was borderline disastrous?
Well, says Chris Cillizza of the Post, Romney stumbled by putting out an email defending recent polling data. Then he followed up that stunner by bashing President Obama’s foreign policy in the Middle East.
That's from Breitbart, which is hardly a neutral source, but is generally an accurate source - at worst, they sometimes leave out material information, but they aren't doing that here.
Cillizza is just one guy, but his take on recent campaign events seems to be popular, and is related to this:Americans' distrust in the media hit a new high this year, with 60% saying they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly... Independents are sharply more negative compared with 2008, suggesting the group that is most closely divided between President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney is quite dissatisfied with its ability to get fair and accurate news coverage of this election. More broadly, Republicans continue to express the least trust in the media, while Democrats express the most. Independents' trust fell below the majority level in 2004 and has continued to steadily decline.
The problem is, Cillizza is, to a large extent, correct: Romney took some hits from the press for the manner in which he criticized Obama's foreign policy and for his comments on the 47% of Americans who don't pay income taxes. Most of that litany of issues that could have hurt Obama's standing was not heavily reported. Overall, Obama's odds of being reelected have probably been going up recently, less because his performance has been worse than Obama's than because negative reports on Romney have dominated the news coverage.
::: posted by Steven at 12:24 PM
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