What's the point of the Washington Post retaining a conservative blogger when the paper's editors will opt to highlight her posts critiquing other conservatives rather than printing ones critical of the president and his lapdog lackeys in the press? Once again the Washington Post's op-ed page editors chose to excerpt a Jennifer Rubin blog post critical of conservatives rather than one tough on Barack Obama and the liberal media.
In her 8-paragraph March 4 item headlined "Talking truth to CPAC" -- condensed from a 14-paragraph blog post by the same title published online on March 3-- Rubin criticized the conservative gathering as "creatures of the 1980s, when our problems, our country and the world were different." "Younger conservatives have to take the movement into their own hands, refurbish it, revitalize it, cast off what is not relevant and persuade others to join the movement," if American political conservatism is to survive, Rubin concluded. Yet an hour earlier on Sunday, Rubin had published to the Post website a 15-paragraph item headlined, "Will anyone police this White House?" wherein the conservative blogger argued that (emphasis mine):
There is no delicate way to put this: The president repeatedly has not told the truth, and the vast majority of the press corps hasn’t bothered to point this out. I’m not sure which is worse — a president so indifferent to the truth or media so derelict in their obligation to find out and report the facts.
Regarding the sequester, Rubin insisted the media should be "asking a raft of questions, including these":
Why did the president go out to hype the sequester and mislead the public? Did his own staff mislead him, or did he willingly engage in this travesty?
Is anyone going to be fired for concocting this web of falsehoods? Will the president correct the record and/or apologize?
Did no one realize the president would have to walk the hysteria back? Did anyone warn the president not to do this?
Why was there a gag order on Cabinet officials until the last couple of weeks? Why was not advanced planning done (e.g., curtailing travel) in anticipation of the sequester?
"We have reached a grim state of affairs," Rubin noted in her concluding paragraph (emphasis mine):
We have reached a grim state of affairs. The press hasn’t challenged and won’t challenge the president. Congress has been bamboozled and put off again and again. And the president has used his bully pulpit to evade, dissemble and scare the public, refusing to accept responsibility for his own conduct. I have little hope for media, but Congress can wake up and do its job, through oversight hearings and if need be by shutting down confirmations.
Editors could easily have condensed Rubin's item for the sake of the space limitations in the print edition's op-ed, but chose not too, illustrating Rubin's wisdom in having "little hope for [the] media."
This isn't the first time the Post opted to use Rubin in print to flog conservatives rather than bash liberals. As my colleague Tim Graham noted on February 1:
The Washington Post somehow calls one of their blogs “Right Turn: Jennifer Rubin’s take from a conservative perspective.” This is an odd title when Rubin complains that a politician is destroying himself and the Republican Party by advocating conservative principles. Rubin was put on the Post op-ed page on Friday trashing Virginia’s Attorney General and GOP candidate for governor this fall: “It is not like I didn’t spot the Ken Cuccinelli train wreck coming up around the bend.”
Then, in another blog from her pro-Israel perch, Rubin blasted Chuck Hagel, but this take did not make the newspaper: “It’s fascinating, actually, to see a nominee of this importance do so poorly. Chuck Hagel, nominated for defense secretary, has gone from awful to atrocious today... It is unclear whether he was not prepped properly, whether he refused to be coached or whether he simply isn’t bright.”
