Over at Huffington Post, Dan Froomkin has an interview with Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein titled, “How the Mainstream Press Bungled the Single Biggest Story of the 2012 Campaign.” It turns out, the single biggest story the media ignored is the fact that Republicans lying liars, to paraphrase the title of a book by Senator Al Franken, who happens to be a close friend of Ornstein. This isn’t a new theme for Mann and Ornstein—they wrote a Washington Post op-ed back in April called, “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem,” and they’ve been promoting a book on this theme.
I don’t have a lot to say about the basic argument, other than you should be deeply skeptical of anyone who tries to prop up obviously ideological contentions as empirical straw men in order to discredit the political opposition. Mann and Ornstein seem to avoid specifics for the most part, though here’s how Froomkin summarizes what they’re saying about the GOP:
