A Riddle Inside a Mystery

Greg Sargent of Talking Points Memo sends us to the Wall Street Journal editorial board:

WSJ: Despite their howls about "the children," Democrats and their media partners are happy to milk them for political gain. Unfortunately, that narrative was bolstered this week by some conservative bloggers. After the Schip veto, Democrats chose a 12-year-old boy named Graeme Frost to deliver a two-minute rebuttal. While that was a political stunt, the Washington habit of employing "poster children" is hardly new. But the Internet mob leapt to some dubious conclusions and claimed the Frost kids shouldn't have been on Schip in the first place. As it turns out, they belonged to just the sort of family that a modest Schip is supposed to help.... Everyone concedes it is hard for some lower-income families like the Frosts to find affordable private health coverage. The debate is over what the government should do about it...

What's going on? The WSJ editorial page criticizing the sadistic wingnut right? The WSJ editorial page is the wingnut right: "They," as the late Vince Foster wrote, "lie without consequence."

I think three things are going on here:

First, that there is some payback for right-wing opposition to the Bush immigration bill so beloved of the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

Second, note that the Journal condemns "some conservative [we]bloggers"--not Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, and Senator McConnell and his staff. Some of it is an attempt to preserve the dead tree franchise.

But my guess is that most of it is something else. Third, I guess that most of it is Rupert Murdoch signalling that the Wall Street Journal editorial page can now be rented: that it won't be the knee-jerk slave of the Republican extreme anymore, and that people who want its support (within reason) should start offering him bids.

Comments

[Matt]

How much would Murdoch want to write "Kiss My Ass" in the editorial page? I would pay to see that!

[jerito]

> Third, I guess that most of it is Rupert Murdoch signalling that the Wall Street Journal editorial page can now be rented: that it won't be the knee-jerk slave of the Republican extreme anymore, and that people who want its support (within reason) should start offering him bids.

If only. "Unfortunately, that narrative was bolstered this week by some conservative bloggers." Dont be caught - it helps the enemy.

[Charles]

You don't think it might be that the adults in the Republican Party are finally figuring out that their nastiness campaign is backfiring, Brad?

[andres]

Charles: if they were adults, they wouldn't have resorted to nastiness in the first place. The adult Republicans, dying breed that they are, are found in appointed policy positions (eg Powell as Secretary of State). But thanks to the ghost of Nixon, I don't know of any prominent adult Republicans in elected positions at the Federal level.