Alex Isenstadt

Whether it's deliberate obfuscation or just plain laziness is up for debate, but the media have a penchant for misleading news consumers with the meme that Blue Dog Democrats are politically "conservative." While the Blue Dog caucus is decidedly more moderate than Democrats as a whole -- you could individual members are "conservative for a Democrat" -- they rarely if ever qualify as conservatives when you look at the entirety of their voting records.

Reports on Governor Sarah Palin's appearance at the National Republican Senatorial Committee dinner in D.C. on Monday nearly all mention that she was quite the center of attention with dinner attendees. Well, all agree with that characterization but Politico's Alex Isenstadt, that is. Isenstadt seems to have been the only one to report that her attendance was a dud. This spurred our friend Videmus Omnia to wonder if Isenstadt went to the same dinner as everyone else? After looking it over, I have to ask the same question.

For Politico, Isenstadt snorted that Palin's appearance at the dinner "went little-noticed." He also stated that, "If she hadn't walked quickly across the stage the outset and if her presence hadn’t been mentioned briefly in the remarks of some of the evening's speakers, it would have been hard to know that she had, in fact, shown up." So there you have it. No one cared a whit that Governor Palin attended the dinner.

But wait. A perusal of other media accounts says just the opposite.