Somebody is wearing ideological blinders.
I chanced upon an old John Leo column that ran in the Albuquerque Journal in May and purported to demonstrate that newspeople are more liberal than ever and that it colors their work. So how come I find otherwise?
Take yesterday's long, fascinating report on the two-party system by David Von Drehle of the Washington Post. I cannot fault its history - the author goes back to the Founders - because I wasn't there. But when he brings it up to date, I find myself rubbing my eyes in disbelief. Get this:
"The Republicans have morphed into the party of low taxes and limited government, pushing an agenda that is conversative both fiscally and morally..."
To write that the Republicans favor low taxes without noting they favor lower taxes for the wealthy, are moving the burden from investment income to earned income and from the top to the middle-class (as recent federal reports note) is ...well, mindblowing. Doing so without a reference to the Republican motivation for lowering taxes is equally mindblowing.
Unless, of course, you consider the possibility that von Drehle wears ideological blinders.
That's not all. Limited government? He's kidding, surely. The stengthening of Washington's police powers isa matter of public record. So is imposition of national goals and means on local education. Ditto the imposition of the religious right's morality on policy, foreign and domestic. And although this President is not alone in seizing the power to make war from the Congress - where the Constitution put it - his use of that power hardly constitutes a move twoard limited government.
But I must enjoyed von Drehle's description of the GOP as fiscally conservative.
Clinton was conservative, working for balanced budgets and a reduced natinal deficit. You can call Bush many things for eliminating the surplus and deepening the national debt, but conservative is not one of them.
And John Leo writes columns on the liberal media. I don't know where he finds it or them. Wait. Yes, I do. He's channeling Spiro Agnew.