Monday, May 16, 2022

Reasonable Moderate Republicans

Part of the scam is once you get reporters to check that box, it's almost impossible to get them to uncheck it. Not fully, anyway.
Notably, The New York Times, just this past March, didn’t even mention the Facebook ads or Stefanik’s promotion of white supremacist ideology in a piece that focused on Stefanik’s complete embrace of Trumpism. The article, headlined, “Elise Stefanik, Reinvented in Trump’s Image, Embodies a Changed G.O.P.,” did a fair job of showing the radical turn by Stefanik, who was once considered a moderate, and underscored her ambitions as she stabbed Liz Cheney in the back, moving into Cheney’s leadership post as Cheney was ostracized for standing against Trump.

But the story failed to report on Stefanik’s promotion of White replacement theory (and it doesn’t appear that the Times reported on Stefanik’s Facebook ads last September when they began running either). In fact, the Times piece, by Annie Karni, appeared to try to distinguish Stefanik from others who promote extremist ideas in the party (bold added for emphasis):

And as her party veers toward extremism, Ms. Stefanik refused to condemn the Republicans who speak most loudly to the fringe. Asked about Ms. Greene, who recently spoke at a white nationalist event, and Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, who has called President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine a “thug,” she said the two were merely reflecting the views of the voters in their districts.