Jonah Goldberg puts his finger on an interesting phenomenon: Conservatives and Republicans are always the problem, regardless of the facts:
It is a funny — though not ha-ha funny — double standard: When the GOP ran the show, it was always held responsible for every “bad†outcome. Now that the GOP is in the minority, it’s still held responsible for every “bad†outcome. I suppose it’s a similar standard that somehow allows the Democrats in charge of overseeing the financial sector to whine that there hasn’t been enough oversight without even the slightest sting of embarrassment.
For the media, the tie always goes to liberals and Democrats. If the two parties are at loggerheads and nothing is happening, it’s the Republicans’ fault, especially its conservative wing. If something bad happens, like the current bailout situation, the media accepts uncritically the Democrat spin that it was a push for deregulation that caused the problem, not that Democrats demonstrably opposed any Republican effort to rein in Fannie and Freddie.
Don’t expect this to change. It will just get worse, that is until every mainstream newspaper goes out of business and the three networks have the same ratings as infomercials on at 2 a.m.
