On the Right, Caught in the Middle

The Harriet Miers nomination for Supreme Court has created a fratricidal battle at the heart of a conservative media establishment that, to outsiders at least, has long seemed to operate with enormous message discipline. But the new dissension raises a host of questions: Does the White House see journalists on the right as being on the team, and punish transgressors by limiting access? Do conservative media folks have a responsibility to challenge Bush when he deviates from their principles -- and if so, why haven't they done it until now? Are former administration officials expected to abide by an unspoken loyalty oath, and how long does it last? The spectacle of former Bush speech writer David Frum, George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Rush Limbaugh, John Podhoretz, the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol and other conservative commentators breaking with their president over Miers has the feel of a messy family feud. These, after all, are the political pugilists who are usually slapping around liberals and Democrats. But there is something about Bush picking his White House counsel and longtime personal lawyer -- and passing over a batch of conservative judges with sterling credentials -- that has inflamed his normally loyal media supporters. Former Republican Party chairman Ed Gillespie says he's detected a whiff of sexism in the opposition to Miers. Fox News anchor Brit Hume has noted that many critics of the Southern Methodist University graduate went to elite Eastern schools. This prompted Frum -- a proud graduate of Yale and Harvard Law -- to fire back at "Brit Hume's and Fred Barnes' embarrassing repetition of Ed Gillespie's talking points: 'Brawwwwwk-sexism; brawwwwwwk-elitism; brawwwwwwwwwk-Harvard; brawwwwwwwwwk; brawwwwwkk; brawwwwwk.'" Barnes, the Standard's executive editor, says that he thinks Frum's opposition is legitimate but that it is unfair to challenge the motives of those who disagree. "The notion that Brit and I are merely tools of Ed Gillespie or the White House is insulting and wrong," says Barnes, adding that he hadn't talked to Gillespie all week. "That's the kind of thing liberals do." Barnes also dismisses as "ridiculous" Frum's contention that Miers should not have been picked even if she turns out to be a solid conservative vote on the court.
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Howard Kurtz]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/16/AR200510...
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Also see:
* The Media and the War: Any Lessons Learned?
In his valedictory column last Sunday, outgoing Washington Post Ombudsman Michael Getler once again took up his newspaper’s failure to subject the Bush administration’s arguments for war in Iraq to the scrutiny they obviously demanded. He terms this failure “by far the single most important and most disappointing performance by the press, including The Post,” and notes, “The key question for journalists is how the process of vetting the main prewar rationale for sending Americans into a war took place, or failed to take place.”
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=1106661