She backs into it with the speed of a tortoise without limbs, but Washington Post media critic Margaret Sullivan eventually makes an excellent point in her latest column: The national media too often fall in love with the most inept and outworn people in politics, particularly as it relates to Republicans.
Sullivan lets the press skate by in chalking the depressing tendency up to “smarmy centrism” of the “middle-lane approach” to journalism, but conservatives and any honest thinker knows it’s more heinous than that. And she lands on it, however briefly, when she ridicules CNN for hiring former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican who hates Trump, with the network, calling it “notable.”
“The idea that cable news is lacking commentary from anti-Trump Republicans is notable only in its lack of self-awareness,” Sullivan wrote. Ah, yes, there it is. It’s not so much a devotion to the “middle lane” as it is an overtly hostile posture toward this White House or any Republican to the right of Bernie Sanders.
Sullivan said the same of CBS taking on Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. “What crucial views do these guys represent, anyway? Kasich was blown out of the water by Donald Trump in 2016, and Flake was a weak-willed resister — all eloquence and no spine.”
The Post itself suffers from the same issue, with just two sort of pro-Trump writers, Hugh Hewitt and Marc Thiessen. But don’t worry, those voices are counterbalanced by the fire-breathing anti-Trump writers George Will, Jennifer Rubin, and Michael Gerson — and those are just the Republican writers! Then there are the liberal columnists Catherine Rampell, Richard Cohen, E.J. Dionne, Eugene Robinson, David Ignatius, Ruth Marcus, Karen Tumulty, Dana Milbank, and on and on.
CNN cleverly identifies any liberal or anti-Trump conservative as a “political commentator” — for example, Ana Navarro, the Bush dynasty acolyte who hates Trump more than Kathy Griffin does. Meanwhile, the mild-mannered pro-Trump guest unlucky enough to be invited on air is always identified as a “Trump supporter.”
This is not “smarmy centrism.” It’s blatant resentment toward the half of the country that doesn’t view the world the way establishment Washington does.
