On day 2 of the Republicans are white Christians controversy, the allegedly progressive Washington Post has this story on Dean. A choice excerpt:
The press chorus then devolved into a cacophony of competing screams. (And Dean knows screams!) After several seconds, a booming voice cut through the noise. It belonged to Brian Wilson, a Fox News correspondent who was standing in the middle of the crowd. He asked Dean “if people are focused on the other things that you’ve said about hating Republicans, about Republicans being dishonest and then this latest comment about the Republican Party is full of white Christians. You say you hate Republicans — does that mean you also'’ hate white Christians?
It’s not exactly that this is a non-story. The story is that partisan hack pseudo-news outfits like Fox are able to keep stories like this alive. But they have to put serious torque on his remarks (e.g., the do you hate Christians bit) to keep it in the news cycle this long.
For the record, I’m no Deaniac. But you don’t have to be a true believer to appreciate that Dean brought the discussion of Iraq into the last election, when the other candidates were tentative at best. My impression is that Dems have erred on the side of caution too long, and that while I might have preferred that Dean had something like: “The president is being too strongly influenced by far right religious groups,” I also appreciate Dean’s candor.
Now move along. There’s real news going down.
