For Dinosaur Media, Democrats = Moderate, Republicans = Extremist

It’s interesting to see how the Old Media constantly spins American politics, but one thing underlies the media’s conception about current events. The Old Media’s base assumption is that the left is “moderate” but all on the right are “far right.” This concept serves as the benchmark for almost every analysis of American politics. It’s the assumption they nearly all start with as they analyze modern politics.

Ron Fournier, Washington bureau chief for the Associated Press, recently penned an analysis of Washington perfectly infused with this benchmark assumption. In early May, Fournier wrote a knee slapper that claimed that there is “no place to go for moderates” because the U.S. political scene is headed for “extremes.” And why is it headed for “extremes”? Most likely, it’s because it looks like the GOP is on the ascendancy and the left is in retreat. But according to Fournier it’s because “moderates” are being chased from the parties.

Fournier thinks that “extremes” are befalling American politics because Charlie Crist of Florida was somehow “chased out” of the Florida Republican Party. He also points to Arlen Specter’s ship-jumping move — which did him absolutely no good — as evidence that the “extremes” are winning. For balance he tries to use the case of former Democrat, now “independent,” Joe Lieberman as an example of a “moderate” Democrat chased from the Democrat Party. These examples, Fournier posits, are proof that “compromise” is being killed in politics today.

Fournier is, of course, absurdly off base.

The reason that Specter and Crist have been rejected by conservative Republicans is that both men campaigned as one thing and governed as another. Both pretended to be more conservative on the campaign trail than they proved to be in office. Both voted for philosophical apostasies and both lost their constituents as a result.

As for Lieberman, the claim that he is a “moderate” is simply ridiculous. Joe Lieberman differed from the left on one issue and one issue only: the war in Iraq. Other than that one issue, Lieberman is a typical lock-step liberal.

Notice the underlying theme here, though. Fournier seems to be saying that anyone that bucks his party and thumbs his nose at his own voters and tracks left is a “moderate.” Fournier assumes that Republicans voting with Democrats is the kind of worthy “compromise” that extremism is endangering.

Absurdly, Fournier blames blogs and the new media for this death of compromise. One wonders how the character assassination of Judge Bork occurred in the new-media-free 1980s if all this “extremism” was created by blogs and the electronic media.

Another maven of the Old Media is lefty columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr., whose recent column echoed Fournier’s theory that the right is an extreme right-wing monolith while the Democrats are scattered in all ideological directions. In other words, Republicans are all extremists while Democrats are reasonably covering all aspects of the ideological scale.

Dionne goes on and on with the assumption that Democrats are the only reasonable side of the aisle simply because he thinks they are not universally let-wing. Of course, one of his chief mistakes is to misunderstand that one of the reasons that some Democrats are trying to look more conservative is that Obama’s hard-core left-wing government is failing miserably, forcing Democrats to scatter for cover. He fails to understand that the reason many of these Democrats won office in the first place is because they disguised themselves as conservatives.

The idea that conservative extremism is ruining the country is laughable when those in danger of losing their seats are in trouble precisely because they drifted to the left. The proper way to see it is that leftism has been the disruptive force: drift left and the American electorate will punish you.

Another aspect of the Old Media’s meme is a scolding of the very Americans they claim to care about: you people are idiots who are forgoing compromise and instead polarizing our political system. It’s the American people’s fault because they are holding true to their center-right principles.

Not all Democrats strategists agree with Old-Media types such as Dionne and Fournier. to be sure. Democrat strategist Douglas Schoen is this month warning Democrats that they “need to flee Obama and tack to the right.” He sees clearly that Obama is far too left-wing for American voters. And as far back as December of 2009, Democrat operative Bill Daley, brother of Chicago’s mayor, was warning his party that it had better pull back from its far left tilt or risk losing to Republicans.

If “moderate” politicians are finding their re-election bids embattled it’s because voters are sick of being lied to by cynical politicians who run as conservatives to get elected — yet govern like liberals once in office.