MSM Highlight GOP 'Defections', Ignore Dems Voting Against Their Own

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We are seeing all over the MSM the reports highlighting the Republicans in the House and Senate who are turning away from the Party line and voting against -- or at least seeming to vote against -- the President's Iraq war policies. The MSM is presenting this revolt as a momentous thing, unprecedented and presenting it as a loss for the President's ideas. Yet, even as a small number of Republicans have, indeed, voted against the Party line, an even larger number of Democrats are voting against their Party, too. Yet, somehow, we are not hearing this being brought up by the tongue waggers and controversy-mongers in the MSM.

In a July 12th vote in the House of Representatives to mandate a certain date to pull out of Iraq, for instance, the fact that four Republicans broke ranks is treated as a stampede of GOP defectors. Yet, in that same vote, 10 Democrats did not vote with their Party -- in effect "defecting" to the GOP side of the argument. Of this fact, the MSM seem strangely quite.

Why is it that four Republican votes against the President's plans is some sort of landslide, yet 10 Democrat votes against their Party line is ignored?

Here are just a few reports that take pains to highlight the GOP defectors and either never mention the Democrat votes, or they do not much focus on them. (Reuters) REPUBLICANS BREAKING RANKS

The White House report is being sent to Congress after several prominent Republicans have broken ranks with Bush on Iraq, adding momentum to Democratic-led efforts to try to force a scaling-back of troop levels more than four years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

New York Times

For now, at least, Mr. Bush has rejected the advice of those who have urged him to hint at a timeline for withdrawal, concluding that to follow that course would only have emboldened Republican rebels and others in Congress to go even further in trying to reshape his strategy.

The San Francisco Chronicle

(San Francisco Chronicle) Republican congressional support for President Bush's Iraq war policy may be splintering, but enough GOP senators remained united with the president Wednesday to sidetrack legislation that would have made it harder to return military units to the war zone.

About the only more in depth story I could find that gives the actual vote totals, was on on the AP.

House OKs Plan to Withdraw US Troops

The vote generally followed party lines: 219 Democrats and four Republicans in favor, and 191 Republicans and 10 Democrats opposed.

But, this is the only mention I have seen of the Democrat votes against their Party being so much higher than the GOP "defectors" votes.

So, once again, we have the troubles of the GOP spotlighted as if nothing like this has ever happened, yet the even larger Democrat "defectors" is ignored as not worthy of discussion!

Once again we see the MSM at work, folks. At work smoothing the waters for the Democrat Party.