The savvy team at ABC's The Note is candid today about where conventional wisdom stands among the chattering classes.
Leaving aside for today the debate about whether the Old Media is liberally biased — and leaving aside for today the debate over what James Carville would call "the President's record of failure and corruption" — all of the Republican Party's problems boil down to this:Posted by Alan at December 6, 2005 12:15 PMBetween now and the State of the Union speech at the end of next month (both an eternity and an eye blink), the Old Media is rooting for certain things.
Let's be clear: not every journalist in every case is rooting for these things. But the dominant sweep of the tone of the coverage now and through January (and quite possibly beyond that) is based on press desires:
1. The President should cave in and bring the troops home from Iraq.
2. The moderate Republicans in the House should get to be more powerful than a locomotive, and pretty much dictate what goes in every bill.
3. Meaning: there should be no drilling in ANWR.
4. Senators Snowe and Collins should announce their opposition to Judge Alito's nomination.
5. Filibustering Supreme Court nominees is fine; the nuclear option is not.
6. The Fitzgerald investigation should widen to include more Bush Administration officials, but not other reporters.
7. Jack Abramoff should sing like Whitney Houston did early in her career — loud, strong, and long.
8. Republican civil war should break out over immigration.
9. The Frist probe should widen.
10. Tom DeLay should be convicted and lose his leadership post forever.
11. Despite all this, the President should be super nice to us during the photo receiving line at the media White House holiday parties.
How would Don Evans, Don Fierce, Don Sipple, Mary Matalin, Ken Duberstein, Ed Gillespie, Bill Kristol, Karen Hughes, Sig Rogich, and Mark McKinnon suggest the White House and its Hill allies solve this problem?
Perhaps we are about to find out.