Right wing bias

If there was ever any doubt that the mainstream press is biased toward the right, take a look at this excerpt from an article entitled, "Republicans Aim for Alito Vote Tuesday":

WASHINGTON - Senate GOP leaders plan to confirm Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito early next week after dealing with a filibuster threat from Democratic die-hards who worry that the conservative judge would swing the court too far to the right.

Die-hards. That's what the Associated Press article calls Democrats who want a filibuster. I was in my car this morning listening to NPR and also heard there the word "die-hards" referring to Democrats who are threatening a filibuster. Sounds like a Republican talking point to me.

While we're on the subject of filibuster, check out what John Aravosis has to say about it over on AMERICAblog:

As for the filibuster, here are my thoughts.

I support a filibuster of Alito IF - IF, IF, IF, IF, IF - the multi-million dollar liberal non-profits and the Democratic and moderate Republican Senators organize a true CAMPAIGN to convince the American public that a filibuster is necessary and good.

To date, I haven't seen that campaign.

What I have seen is Democratic Senators doing what they do best. Finally taking the right position on an issue, but doing nothing to build public support FOR that position. In politics both are crucial. It's not enough for a politician to do the right thing. He/she (and the big non-profits) have to devise the public relations campaign (online, offline, grassroots, media, etc.) to create the buzz in their favor. Otherwise, the public will slam them for what they're doing, the effort will be a failure, and the members of Congress in question will face a harder time getting re-elected.

Why don't we learn from the Republicans instead of being cowed by them? What they do works. And what they do best is to energize their base. They get those talking points out there. Heck, as far as I know, we don't even have anybody in the party higher-ups who is publishing talking points on a regular basis. The liberal bloggers would drive them home if we did.

John continues with this assertion:

Some day Democrats will learn what Republicans have long known. It takes a campaign to win an issue. When the Democrats and their traditional million-dollar non-profits learn that lesson, and implement it, then I'll be all in favor of a filibuster. But a filibuster without the campaign will not only fail, it will convince already spineless Democrats that the filibuster itself was a mistake because it was a filibuster, not because the filibuster wasn't supported with a real public relations campaign.

I agree. Maybe we all need to write to Howard Dean about this.