Dear ladies and gentlemen of the traditional media:
I now expect you -- no, REQUIRE you -- to run 24/7 stories about Republicans being in severe, angry disarray going into their convention next week.
Why? Because John McCain's jilted Vice-Presidential candidates are extremely pissed at being used for cover over the last few weeks:
(more....)
Palin Pick Leaves Bruised Feelings
By Anne E. Kornblut
DENVER -- Though it was high in shock value, the Palin pick left bruised feelings among the short-list contenders who were not picked -- and infuriated some Republican officials who privately said McCain had gone out on a limb, unnecessarily, without laying the groundwork for such an unknown. Two senior Republican officials close to Mitt Romney and Tim
Pawlenty said they had both been rudely strung along and now "feel manipulated."
"They now know that they were used as decoys, well after McCain had decided not to pick them," one Republican involved in the process said.
The Republicans are in complete chaos, and former rivals are enraged at the candidate.
Does that storyline sound familiar, ladies and gentlemen of the media?
It should. It's the same exact one you flogged shamelessly for the Democratic convention that just ended, even when it was crystal clear that you were mostly making it up. A ragtag group of fools calling itself "PUMA" was the best you could unearth to justify pumping oxygen into that same story every day, and it turns out that their numbers were so pathetically low that they could meet in one restaurant in Denver.
And then Hillary Clinton herself destroyed their reason for existence with a brilliant speech supporting Barack Obama... and yet you media Heathers STILL tried to keep the story going.
Last night's speech by Barack Obama made it ALL go away, of course: his incredible performance dissolved all your little storylines, once and for all.
But I know that it makes most of you sad, since you love your pet narratives. You love your soap operas, and you love repeating them ad infinitum. Heck, it beats working. Real reporting is hard!
Well, you have my sympathies. I know how difficult it is for you Beltway geniuses to think up new stories.
So I'm going to make it easy on you. Just run the same exact story next week, and substitute the names "Mitt Romney" and "Tim Pawlenty" for "Hillary Clinton." Make that THE big story of the convention: how the Republican party is divided into factions that loathe each other, and how that schism severely endangers John McCain's chances of winning in November.
Easy, right ? And unlike the Clinton story, this one is mostly TRUE.
(But wait, that's not really a factor for you, is it? )
...In any case, I look forward to your 24/7 stories of Hopelessly Divided Republicans next week.