The Scrapbook has had occasion to complain from time to time about the way in which journalists in the mainstream news media use the terms “conservatives” and “Republicans.” “Conservatives” hold this loathsome opinion, they might write, or “Republicans” are doing that bizarre thing, but when you read closely you discover that the writer can only name two or three actual “Republicans” or “conservatives” as instances, and often they barely fit the description at all: Donald Trump Jr., say, or Tomi Lahren.
Consider a recent piece on the Washington Post’s popular politics blog, The Fix: “Republicans Were Upset about Election Fraud—Before It Threatened Their Candidate.” The piece, by Eli Rosenberg, was about the North Carolina congressional race in which the Republican candidate, Mark Harris, squeaked past his Democratic opponent by (as it appears) aggressively “harvesting” absentee voters: that is, by having operatives go door to door cajoling likely non-voters to fill out absentee ballots and then dropping them off at the elections board. That’s illegal in North Carolina, as it should be everywhere, and writers on the right have accordingly expressed skepticism about the election’s outcome. National Review’s Rich Lowry, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, and the editors of this magazine have all suggested that the Harris campaign or its operatives were likely up to no good.
Of course, Rosenberg might easily and more convincingly have written a piece headlined “Democrats Dismissed the Existence of Election Fraud—Before It Sank Their Candidate.” We leave that point aside and ask: Who were all these Republicans who suddenly dropped their concerns about ballot integrity in order to protect an endangered GOP candidate? In a 1,500-word piece, Rosenberg names precisely one: a guy named Dallas Woodhouse, the executive chairman of the North Carolina GOP. Rosenberg faults other Republicans because they’ve “remained silent” on the North Carolina race, although he appears not to have asked them for comment.
That settles it. The next time The Scrapbook makes a broad generalization about the dumb things “liberals” or “Democrats” say and think, we will have in mind our Uncle Merv, who is both a liberal and a Democrat. What, you’ve never heard of him?
