Consider if you will: two editorial pages, both owned by the same parent company (the New York Times). One, the Times itself, has today published a very sensible editorial noting that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are getting embarrassingly close to casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, and that those chickens could well come home to roost in a most awkward fashion if any of the several criminal investigations into Adelson’s business practices end badly for him.
The other, our local Boston Globe, published a gushy “oooh, he’s so principled” piece after Romney announced that Ryan was his running mate, but since then hasn’t found anything to say about Ryan, even as the Globe’s front page catches Ryan in what sure looks like a series of flat-out lies about seeking stimulus money for his district while publicly saying how bad the stimulus bill was. Ryan is quoted in the story as having said publicly that the stimulus was a “wasteful spending spree” that wouldn’t do any good; but in his letters seeking money for his district, he’s quoted as saying that the stimulus money would “create or retain approximately 7,600 new jobs over the three-year grant period and the subsequent three years.” This is the kind of thing that hurts the country: politicians publicly saying one thing but doing another, thereby trying to appease an extreme element of their party while simultaneously taking advantage of good policies that they opposed for political reasons.
There’s also this oldie-but-goodie in that article from Ryan, regarding the stimulus bill:
“This trillion dollar spending bill misses the mark on all counts,” Ryan said in a statement at the time issued by his office. “This is not a crisis we can spend and borrow our way out of — that is how we got here in the first place.”
What rubbish. All due respect to Ryan – and not much is due, I’m afraid – the notion that too much spending and borrowing is what caused the financial crisis in 2008 is stupid. This is the supposed intellectual leader of the GOP? This is Mr. Principled? And yet, instead, the Globe devotes precious editorial page space to calling for an apology from Joe Biden for his “back in chains” remark, even hilariously asking the reader to “imagine if Republican Paul Ryan uttered comments like that.”
Come on, Globe. What Biden said at that campaign event will have exactly zero impact on the future of this country. But Paul Ryan’s evident failure to understand what caused the financial crisis, combined with his newly-reported blatant hypocrisy on the subject of economic policy, reveals a serious shortcoming about him – and it’s the Globe’s own reporting that revealed it! Shouldn’t the editorial page have something to say about that, instead of parroting Sean Hannity on Biden?
Christopher says
…this shows that NYT allows its other outlets to be editorially independent, which I would count as generally a good thing.
Mark L. Bail says
wants to be the next David Broder. Ryan is the candidate that lets the very serious people act like the GOP is actually a serious party. They are a match made in heaven.
smalltownguy says
Once again, Krugman nails it:
So that’s the constituency Romney is targeting: not a large segment of the electorate, but a few hundred at most editors, reporters, programmers, and pundits. His hope is that Ryan’s unjustified reputation for honest wonkery will transfer to the ticket as a whole.
So, a memo to the news media: you have now become players in this campaign, not just reporters. Mitt Romney isn’t seeking a debate on the issues; on the contrary, he’s betting that your gullibility and vanity will let him avoid a debate on the issues, including the issue of his own fitness for the presidency. I guess we’ll see if it works.
David says
nt