Times chooses Party over Country

Taranto, in his usual debonair manner, hoists the opposition party on its own petard. Or, in this case, the very words of their official party organ: the New York Times (or as I like to call it, Pravda's Manhattan Bureau, due to their egregious history of censorship).

A news story in the New York Times isn't exactly news: Democrats and Republicans, the paper reports, are divided over Iraq! The paper reports that each party blames the other for the breakdown of foreign-policy bipartisanship: Democrats say the Republicans repeatedly broke the old rules, treating national security as a wedge issue to make Democrats look weak and unacceptable, especially in 2004. "George Bush decided to make foreign policy partisan in a way that Ronald Reagan or the first George Bush never did," said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said, "The divisions over Iraq and national security are the house that Karl Rove and George Bush built." But Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said the war and national security were entirely appropriate issues for election campaigns. "I don't think we're politicizing the war," Mr. Mehlman said. "I think the fact is that there are legitimate and important differences, and it is the job of a campaign to clarify between individual candidates on what is the central question our nation faces, which is, How do you win this global war on terror?" On the same day, the Times editorial board endorsed antiwar zillionaire Ned Lamont's Democratic primary challenge to Connecticut's Sen. Joe Lieberman: In his effort to appear above the partisan fray, he has become one of the Bush administration's most useful allies. . . . [President Bush's] administration has depicted any questions or criticism of his policies as giving aid and comfort to the terrorists. And Mr. Lieberman has helped that effort. He once denounced Democrats who were "more focused on how President Bush took America into the war in Iraq" than on supporting the war's progress. . . . By suggesting that there is no principled space for that kind of opposition, he has forfeited his role as a conscience of his party, and has forfeited our support. . . . This primary is not about Mr. Lieberman's legislative record. Instead it has become a referendum on his warped version of bipartisanship, in which the never-ending war on terror becomes an excuse for silence and inaction. We endorse Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary for Senate in Connecticut. The Democrats can deny that it is they who have treated foreign policy as a partisan issue, but the Times can't deny that it [has] encouraged them to do so.

In short, despite the Times' childish mocking of the "never-ending war on terror", said war is perceived by most Americans as reality on the ground. Having witnessed extremist attacks in Manhattan, Washington, Bali, Beslan, Madrid, London, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Israel, Mumbai, Kashmir, Thailand, Darfur, Somalia, Australia, Indonesia, and the Philippines (not a complete list), most realists with a lick of sense can put two and two together.

Of course, no one ever said the Times has a lick of sense. Issuing regular paychecks to the Triad of Ignorance (Dowd, Herbert, and Rich) is conclusive proof that the Times isn't running on all cylinders.