Liberal blogs skeptical of Times' McCain story
Conservative blogs and talk radio have swallowed their dislike of McCain to attack the Times, and the MSM is focused on the merits of the charges and on the fight between McCain and the paper.
And many widely read liberal bloggers, breaking with partisan patterns, are expressing discomfort with the Times' reporting and offering conditional defenses of McCain.
Greg Sargent, at TPM's Horse's Mouth, writes that the Times doesn't "have the goods" and "shouldn't have gone there." Matthew Yglesias accuses the Times of "shameful" dealings in "innuendo," though he's interested in the sex-free, lobbying aspects of the story. Big Tent Democrat at TalkLeft calls it "troubling" and bad for Democrats. Kevin Drum writes of the Times that "there's no way that they 'nailed' anything."
Other blogs — like MyDD, despite some passing glee; DailyKos; and, mostly, OpenLeft — are essentially ignoring the story. Carpetbagger Report seems almost alone in obsessing about it.
The defense of McCain from the left reflects well on the blogs' objectivity, and they certainly aren't defending McCain on the substantive issues of the election. Indeed, they've been leading the way in trying to break the mainstream media's long love affair with McCain, to paint him as a Bush conservative and as a dangerous hard-liner on foreign policy and Iraq.
Still, their even treatment of the subject may disturb Democratic strategists who are relying on the bloggers to serve, in every case, as the kind of partisan strike force that conservative blogs and talk radio were in 2004.
politico.com |
