Kindness Can Be A Simple Dereliction Of Duty

The Corner:

Ifill and Republican Wimps [Peter Kirsanow]

The refrain from most of the GOP talking heads over the last twenty four hours concerning Gwen Ifill's role during the VP debate is that she's a fine journalist, who, now that the fact of her book is public knowledge, shouldn't be precluded from moderating the event. Heck, it may even work to Palin's advantage because Ifill will be under intense scrutiny to be fair and balanced.

This rationale points to the GOP's ( and, to some extent, conservatives') nearly wholesale capitulation to liberal media dominance and is one of the reasons the GOP base find themselves so frequently dispirited: no objection, no fight, no pushback to a howling conflict of interest.

We're instructed that it's perfectly understandable when all of the Democratic presidential candidates refuse to debate on Fox. But Republicans are supposed to quietly take their medicine from a moderator with a direct financial interest in an Obama/ Biden victory.

I concur that Ifill's a professional. That's not the point. Republicans will find themselves losing more and more often if they do not vigorously challenge these media travesties. And it's the right thing to do for the country. A partisan, cheerleading press is not a hallmark of a free and democratic society.

So many times we see Republicans act "gentlemanly" and turn the other cheek —to what end? It simply emboldens the media toward even greater bias. How does that serve the interests of the country? Democrat fingerprints are all over the current financial mess; Dodd and Frank were integral to the debacle, yet the GOP does nothing to counter the prevailing narrative that this is a McCain—House Republican problem—and McCain's poll numbers plummet.

The conclusion of McCain's convention speech exhorting us to "fight, fight, fight" has been quickly forgotten. There's no honor in failing to challenge brazen media bias and distortion. It does the nation no good when voters cast ballots based upon false or misleading information. Right now it looks as if the same politicians who engineered the Fannie Mae/ Freddie Mac train wreck are going to win in November. The most liberal candidate with the most radical associations of any presidential aspirant in history is poised to win because the media, with virtual GOP acquiescence, has portrayed that candidate as mainstream.

The GOP seems to depend on Rush Limbaugh to correct the record, and query where we'd be without him? But the GOP better start doing it's job and forthrightly, aggressively challenge blatant media transgressions each and every time they occur. The economy's at stake. Success in the war on terrorism is at stake. The Supreme Court is at stake. Do your duty. And part of that duty is not meekly surrendering to rank media bias.