"Last night was a triumph for the conservative movement and repudiation to those who said Republicans had to move away from the conservative ideology to achieve victory," Media Research Center President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell declared today.

"I hereby grant the Dewey Defeats Truman Awards for the most incompetent political reporting of the year to the following journalists for their impeccably inept coverage," Bozell noted in a press release earlier today before listing Politico's Mike Allen, CBS's Katie Couric, National Journal's Ron Brownstein, and the entire New York Times editorial board as the recipients of the (dis)honor.

"Congratulations for embarrassing yourselves, your news organizations and the industry for a backfire that only President Truman himself could truly appreciate," proclaimed Bozell.

For the full press release, including the quotes that were the catalysts for the Deweys, click here.

In the wake of liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava suspending her congressional campaign after polls put her behind the Democrat and New York's Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman who has earned support from many conservatives, Los Angeles Times veteran Ron Brownstein fretted over how it's “a sign that the leash that the base is holding on the party is tightening and that the Palins, the talk radio, Rush Limbaughs, the Fox, the definition of what is acceptable as a Republican I think is narrowing.”

Brownstein, who joined National Journal in 2007 after nearly two decades at the LA Times and three years as “chief staff writer” for Ralph Nader, conceded that “in the short run there's clear energy here in the small government/anti–government argument, but in the long run,” he warned, “I do wonder about whether Republicans are going to have the freedom to maneuver they'll need to recover in some of those blue states where they've significantly eroded?”

Undermining his credibility, Brownstein painted Senator Arlen Specter as another victim of the awful right-wingers, claiming “Specter essentially was forced to leave the party after voting for the stimulus.”

A new high-tech Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Racism.  And parents too dumb to raise their children.  

That was how NBC sought to explain away opposition to Pres. Obama's planned speech to schoolchildren.

Andrea Mitchell narrated a segment on this morning's Today on the subject.

ANDREA MITCHELL: Other presidents have faced opposition.  But experts say it's now more organized, from cable television to blogs, to Twitter. It's gone viral.

RON BROWNSTEIN: There are mechanisms for conservatives to reach other conservatives and to keep them in a state of agitation.  And that is much more developed than it was even when Bill Clinton was president.

Americans expecting a serious discussion about the soon to be enacted stimulus plan certainly didn't find it on Sunday's "Meet the Press" which instead was sixty minutes of some of the most disgraceful Obama sycophancy since Chris Matthews bragged about getting a thrill up his leg when the Democrat presidential candidate spoke.

Virtually every time host David Gregory or any of his guests opened their mouths -- with the possible exception of the Wall Street Journal's Kim Strassel -- one could close one's eyes and envision the words emanating from a member of the Adminstration and/or the president himself.

Consider first what the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson said:

Appearing on MSNBC shortly after 1 p.m. EST with anchor Andrea Mitchell, The Atlantic's Ron Brownstein rebuked House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) for drawing a legitimate criticism of President-elect Obama's choice of what he described as the "sharp-elbowed" Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) as his White House chief-of-staff (see video embedded at right, transcript is below page break).

Mitchell dismissed as "warfare" and Brownstein hit as "reflexive partisanship" Boehner's rather mild statement:

This is an ironic choice for a President-elect who has promised to change Washington, make politics more civil, and govern from the center.

But it's not just Republican partisans who are noting Emanuel's hard-nosed, partisan politics. As the Reuters news wire noted in a November 5 article, "Emanuel would bring [a] tough edge to White House job":

Media watchers have been asking themselves since Barack Obama became the front-runner to win the Democrat nomination for president when the press will turn against him and start treating the junior senator from Illinois like a candidate instead of a rock star.

The worm might have turned on Sunday's "This Week," when, as my colleague Brad Wilmouth reported, Cokie Roberts actually used the feminist card to trash Obama for Hillary's sake.

Almost as tasty, about three minutes later, a discussion about how Obama is beatable as the Democrat candidate began with Cokie saying (video available here, relevant section begins at minute 12:30):

Ron Brownstein is a liberal. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.

On Sunday, the national affairs columnist for the Los Angeles Times, a liberal notwithstanding, went on NBC's "Meet the Press" to discuss the just-announced imminent departure of Karl Rove from the White House.

Like many of the really disingenuous liberal shills in the media, Brownstein chose to ignore extremely pertinent facts as he disparaged the soon-to-be-former Administration member:

As people who are following the G-8 summit in Germany are well aware, it is highly doubtful that any meaningful accord will be reached at this meeting concerning CO2 emissions. In fact, reports out of Europe and Asia for many weeks leading up to this event have made this eventuality quite clear.

Yet, this didn’t prevent the Los Angeles Times’ Ron Brownstein for blaming the lack of such an agreement on President George W. Bush.

In an op-ed published Wednesday entitled “Don't Sugarcoat Climate Change; Calling out Bush's intransigence on emissions caps may be the best way for other G-8 countries to get the U.S. to budge on global warming,” Brownstein chose to ignore all of the facts surrounding this issue, and instead pointed an accusatory finger at the media’s favorite target (emphasis added throughout):

Los Angeles Times columnist (and longtime political reporter) Ron Brownstein tackles the issue of the Nevada Democratic Party dumping Fox News Channel as a debate partner. He thinks this rejection is similar to how "conservatives deal with mainstream media organizations they consider biased against them." Put aside for a minute the odd notion that Republican Party organizations or politicians would refuse to do debates thrown by liberal networks. As if. In his March 16 column, Brownstein's peddling the old canard that Fox News is exponentially more biased than "mainstream" news organizations:

The situation isn't exactly parallel. For all the howling on the right, it's difficult to argue that mainstream news organizations operate with anything approaching Fox' partisan and ideological agenda. (E-mails: commence now.) But there's no question many conservatives feel as wronged by elements of the mainstream media as Democrats do by Fox.

On NBC’s “Meet The Press” this morning, host Tim Russert stocked his panel with three left-of-center journalists – Nina Totenberg of NPR, Ron Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times, and David Gregory of NBC News – to discuss the events of the week. When they got to the nomination of Samuel Alito to replace retiring justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Russert mentioned that when Bill Clinton was president, both Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, despite obvious Liberal leanings, were approved by a strong majority of both Democrats and Republicans. “And they say, ‘Why can't we have the same courtesy to conservative jurists under President Bush?’"

In response, Totenberg said: “If you look at the Ginsburg nomination, for example, she'd been a judge, I think, for 12 years. She'd been, actually, a pretty conservative liberal judge, if you can be such a thing.” This could be the first time that anyone has referred to the former general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union as being “pretty conservative.”

As the discussion ensued, Totenberg expressed frustration with the president’s second choice to replace Sandra Day O’Connor:

(As read on-air by Rush Limbaugh)

One hot and humid weekend this past July, America’s leading Democrats -- including some of the early favorites for their party’s 2008 presidential nomination such as Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN), Governor Tom Vilsack (D-IA), and Governor Mark Warner (D-VA) -- gathered in Columbus, Ohio at a conference hosted by the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.

Predictably, the press had a hard time controlling its glee when Senator Clinton was announced as the point-person to lead the DLC’s new political offensive -- code name “American Dream Initiative” -- to define the party’s agenda for 2006 and 2008.

As Ron Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times put it:

The appointment solidified the identification of Clinton, once considered a champion of the party's left, with the centrist movement that helped propel her husband to the White House in 1992. It also continued her effort, which has accelerated in recent months, to present herself as a moderate on issues such as national security, immigration and abortion.

Unfortunately, Mr. Brownstein -- much like the rest of the mainstream print media as far as I can tell -- chose not to be completely honest with his readers -- or the American public for that matter -- concerning just how far to the right Mrs. Clinton was going by affiliating herself with this organization, and, maybe most important, what was actually in this “Dream Initiative”. (cont'd...)